


Summer is More Than Freedom

by ships_to_sail, storieswelove



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Angst, Blow Jobs, Coming Out, Everyone is grown up by the end, Hair Braiding, Hand Jobs, Jealousy, M/M, Making Out, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn, Teenage Dorks, Underage Drinking, also like a lot of swearing?, it’s just the rule of the universe, these boys are really dorky and also very very very into each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:28:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 46,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22974022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail, https://archiveofourown.org/users/storieswelove/pseuds/storieswelove
Summary: “My family, um. We — they — actually own the camp?”“Oh,” is all Patrick says, and it’s a two-letter word with two million meanings and David doesn’t know how he’s supposed to hear it when it comes out of Patrick’s mouth. “That’s, um. Wow.”“What ‘wow’?”“I’ve just never met anyone whose parents owned a summer camp before.”“It’s a camp, not the diamond from Titanic.”“The what?”*David and Patrick spend six summers together, first as campers, then as counselors, always as best friends.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd & David Rose
Comments: 267
Kudos: 458





	1. The World is Gonna Roll Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aulauem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aulauem/gifts).



> Because sometimes you have to manifest the fic you want to see in the world.  
> Happiest of happy birthdays, friend. You deserves the absolute MOST <3 
> 
> Folks, this fic is finished! Barring a major intervention from the universe, we should be posting a chapter a day for the next week! Enjoy, y'all!

**2004: The Summer Before Grade 9**

Stevie has been warning David for weeks that she’s trying out for a regional production of _Cats._ Still, he isn’t prepared for the phone call where she drops the bombshell — she isn’t coming to camp this year. It's the only time of year he gets to see his reluctantly-labeled best friend, and now she's not even going to be there.

“How could you — what am I — _Stevie,_ ” he says, and it sounds like a whine, but it’s really more of a plea. 

Stevie knows that. “You’re going to be okay, David. It’s just eight weeks.” 

"Oh, _just_ eight weeks. I’ll try to remember that while I’m listening to Ted ramble about turtles for the twelfth time in a week."

"I told you this was coming," she says, and David chooses to imagine that she sounds a little guilty. 

"And _I_ told you I was getting that asymmetrical haircut last year, but it still didn't keep you from mocking me for the entire summer, did it?"

"You'll be fine," she says again. And because she hates him just as much as she loves him, she adds, "who knows. Maybe this is the summer you make another friend."

David groans. _Eight weeks_ with Mutt Schitt and Ted Mullens and Twyla Sands and _oh dear god_ Stevie is wrong. She’s _so_ wrong. Forget making friends – he is never going to survive this summer in one piece. 

* 

Turns out, he's half right. He manages to survive the summer without Stevie. His heart, however, doesn’t make it through in one piece. 

When the cabins start to consolidate, dropping from three full cabins to just one or two as they get older and people get summer jobs or _try out for regional productions of_ Cats, David argues that they should just pack everyone in the same year into three cabins and be done with it — gender be damned. But he’s met with a lot of shrill mumblings from adults about proper etiquette. 

Apparently David’s arguments that they’d all known each other for years, already knew all the secret places to make out, anyway, and that _queer teens exist too_ , are not persuasive enough for management. 

So they’d been left with one guys cabin in his age group, three of the beds empty, and only one name David doesn't recognize on the roster, some poor soul named Patrick Brewer, who's about to start his first year several summers behind the rest of them. 

*

There are a million things David is quickly realizing will be different this summer without Stevie. Including, apparently, that he’s going to have to carry his own bag. 

The crowd in front of him slowly thins as campers manage to wrestle their bags out of the giant jumble in front of the bus, like a scene straight out of _The Parent Trap_. David hates it, and Stevie is vicious, which is why it’s usually her grabbing the bags, and him grabbing the ice water and snacks. 

Instead, he’s definitely getting a sunburn, staring at a fly on some new kid’s neck, and he’s only like eight inches closer to his bag than he was ten minutes ago. 

The minutes pass, and David has started to count the individual drops of sweat rolling down his own back, when he’s finally close enough to spot his Gucci duffle bags. He’s so close to getting out of the sun and into his cabin, if this new kid would just move the fuck out of his way. 

The guy has his hands in his shorts pockets, and a bright blue shirt on, and he’s craning his neck without, David thinks, the appropriate level of urgency, seemingly oblivious to the way David keeps trying to edge around him. After a few seconds, it almost seems like he’s doing it on purpose. 

David huffs out an unnecessarily large breath, and the guy turns around. He’s a little shorter than David, has a round face, and David thinks he understands for the first time what people mean when they say doe-eyed. The new camper stares at David for a beat, smiles, and says, “Getting a little impatient there, man?” 

David’s jaw drops. Who the _fuck_ does this guy think he is? Before he can come up with a witty retort, the new kid says, “don’t worry, I’ve got it.” He looks up and down at David’s outfit, a pair of skirted Rick Owens and his mohawked Helmut Lang hoodie. “I’m guessing those two are yours?” He points right at David’s Gucci duffels.

And, all right, David’s had enough. Maybe not enough to stop someone grabbing his bags for him, but still. “You’re very sure of yourself aren’t you?”

The guy smirks, an impossible smile that somehow turns down the corners of his mouth instead of up, and shimmies through the pile of bags, picking up both of David’s and another bright teal one that David assumes must be his. David watches the muscles in his arms ripple from the effort, and okay, maybe that isn’t the worst. 

“Uh, thanks,” he manages when the bags are deposited at his feet, and hoists one on each arm. 

The guy is still smirking, and David isn’t sure he likes it — he can’t tell if he’s being made fun of or not. He turns to leave. 

He hears “It was nice to meet you!” as he walks away, and heads to his cabin alone. 

Damn it, he really misses Stevie. 

*

“Oh my gosh, hi David!” Twyla beams and waves at him from a dozen feet away. David can feel the cheer, like, radiating off of her and it sets something in his teeth on edge. He does his best to smile back, but he’s sure it comes out looking more like a grimace.

“Hey, Twyla.” He doesn’t have the emotional energy to wave, so he lifts his chin at her. She doesn’t seem to care, slowing her pace as they get closer to each other. Groaning inside, not not seeing another way out of it, David does the same. 

“How are you? How was your year? Wait — Stevie isn’t coming back this year, didn’t she tell you?” The questions are an assault, with no actual time to answer, and David does a little head-shake double take, his eyes wide, and decides to answer the last, and easiest one, first.

“Yes, she told me. I was just…” he trails off and waves his hand through the air, because he’s not really sure what he was doing. Wandering around camp, waiting for dinner, mostly. But telling Twyla that feels like a new low of personal embarrassment, so it’s easier to just not say anything. 

Twyla looks at him with a kind of gentle sadness that makes his throat constrict a little. “Did you want to come hang out in the girls bunk? I’m still unpacking, you can join me.”

“No, thank you.” He tries and fails not to suck his teeth a little.

“Are you sure? I brought my big fan from home, it’s like fifteen degrees cooler in there.”

And that’s probably the only thing she could have said to him to entice him into a casual social hang with Twyla while she unpacks her Target jeans and Ross tops. Besides, maybe he can get a glimpse of the girl taking Stevie’s bunk this year. “If you’re sure, then. Sure.” 

It’s as gracious as he’s going to get, and he falls into step behind her as they finish trekking to the freshman girls cabin. 

*

There are very few perks to being the child of a camp owner. For instance, the privilege of being the first to arrive, hauling tarps off tables and choking half to death on the dust. His dad gets him with that one exactly one time before David insists on arriving when all the other campers do. 

One of the legitimate pluses, though, is knowing some of the details that can make or break a summer, at least in David's opinion. Like which showers have the most hot water, or which vending machines only ever eat your cash. Or, as the new kid is about to learn the hard way, which water fountains never cool down, offering only disgustingly lukewarm water in the height of summer.

David is just coming back from his trek to Stevie's bunk when he sees an unfamiliar set of shoulders bending low over the drinking fountain outside the arts and crafts cabin. Stevie's absence at camp this summer has left him feeling off-kilter, and hanging with Twyla hadn't helped. She’s a lovely girl, but every time David joked about wanting to murder himself and/or another camper, she’d looked at him with concerned little ‘hm’. The girl taking Stevie’s bunk is an adorable little Disney chipmunk of a girl named Kelli who flips her blonde hair and smiles at David despite the inadvertent sourness he tosses her way because, through no fault of her own, she's not Stevie. The whole thing had been like a weird mirror-version of past summers, and he's still trying to shake the unsettled feeling in his stomach when a mouthful of water lands at his feet and kicks up a splattering of dust and water drops on his Rick Owens.

"Ugh!" He screeches as the vaguely familiar shoulders finish turning in his direction. The new kid has the back of his hand pressed against his mouth, and the guy’s expression is a twist of mortified disgust that David inherently empathizes with. As much as he can, anyway, considering this dude just _spit_ on him. At him. Near enough to him that it doesn't really make a difference.

"Oh my God, I am so sorry," the spitter says quickly, his eyes flicking back and forth between the little puddle he's created and the flecks of rust-brown water dotting David's ankles. "It's just, the water is –"

"Hot? Yeah, I know." David flicks his ankle, like it's gonna do anything, and tries to swallow the sad little noise when he realizes the spots are already starting to dry, warped and brown, all over his high-tops. " _Everyone_ knows." 

A shade of pink David has only ever seen in the sky appears on the guy's cheekbones, and he ducks his head and digs the toe of his beat up hiking boots into the dirt. "Well. I didn't. But I do now. I'm really sorry about your shoes." It's the blush that softens the blow, and the very real fact that this guy grabbed his bags for him. David should like, at least try to be nice. 

He waves his hand. "Don't worry about it. It's fine."

"You don't seem fine. Those shoes are nice."

"They're just shoes." Just $1,000 shoes. 

"Then why do you look a little like I just ran over your dog?"

"I don't have a dog, and you _did_ just spit on me."

"Well, more _near_ you, really."

David's eyes narrow but the other boy's jaw twitches and David smiles in spite of himself. "Does it matter?"

"I think maybe it kinda does," he says, his eyes doing this weird thing David can only describe as _twinkling_ , which isn't something David thought actual human eyes could do. "I'm Patrick. I'm new." He looks for a second like he's going to try and shake David's hand, but instead he just flicks his wrist in a little half wave and then shoves both his hands into the pockets of his gym shorts.

"I'm David." He crosses his arms and folds his fingers into the crooks of his elbows. The other boy just sort of watches him, and David doesn't really know what to do. He's never been a master of making friends, Stevie notwithstanding. And even that was more repeated exposure, a gradual wearing down—and a few makeout sessions-turned-bad-idea— more than anything.

"Okay, well," Patrick says. "It was nice to meet you, I guess."

And maybe it's because he's thinking of Stevie and feeling soft, or because he's sort of out of options for the summer, but before Patrick can fully turn around, David says, "That water fountain always runs hot. So does the one by the tennis court, the old stable, and the one on the far left in the mess hall."

"Thanks for the tip. Anything else _everyone_ just knows?"

He's teasing David, which should be setting off all his regular alarm bells, but. There's no edge to it, Patrick's voice as kind as his eyes and it trips a different set of sensors, deep down in David's gut.

"I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."

"I think you might do that anyway." He finishes turning, and shoots the water fountain one last glare, so he misses the way David's eyebrows shoot into his hairline, the heat in his cheeks unrelated to the sweltering sun.

"The one by the mess hall is coldest. If you wait until the post-breakfast lull, Marybeth in the kitchen can get you a bunch of ice for the day," David offers, his voice low and conspiratorial, and Patrick looks at him with a smile that sets to right something that Stevie's absence knocked askew.

"Thanks for the inside scoop," he says, grins, and then he takes off at an honest to god jog. 

As he watches Patrick run toward the mess hall, David is left with the sinking feeling that _something_ just happened. He's just not sure what.

*

Later, when the time comes to pick beds, David is sitting on his regular lower bunk – the same lower bunk he's slept in his entire camp life – when Patrick takes the top bunk next to his, so their beds are diagonal and David is left staring at Patrick's navel when his shirt slides up with the movement of his arms, swinging his duffle onto the bunk. In a split second decision, David grabs his bag off the bottom bunk and flings it onto the top bunk above him, directly across from to Patrick. They take up the entire back wall, one straight line, David’s head to Patrick’s feet. 

With a deep, steadying breath, he climbs up the ladder, counting all four rungs steadily. Fear of heights, be damned. 

He’s not sure why he does it. He’s said all of fifteen words to Patrick, and he’s terrified of heights any higher than his own waist. 

Except that he hasn’t even been at camp for twelve hours and he can feel Stevie’s absence everywhere he turns, and maybe he just wants to take a gamble on a friend who isn’t going to turn everything he says into a fucking pun.

From his new perch, he scans the room and makes eye contact with each and every person, daring them to say a word about his new sleeping arrangement. 

It’s Ted, of course, who can’t take a hint. “But bud, you’ve always...” he gestures back to the bottom bunk. One glare from David, strong enough to stop even Alexis in her tracks, shuts him up. David takes his time unpacking the bag of bedding he’s bought, the only camper with a coordinated sheet set, and more than one pillow. He settles in with his book and waits for lights out. 

*

Patrick is fidgety, that first night, as they get the call for lights out. David doesn’t mean to notice, but he can’t seem to stop noticing Patrick. It’s like he’s had some kind of beacon turned on and he can’t find the off button.

There’s a big wind picking up outside, loud enough to give them some blessed white noise. The cabin has been dark for an hour, David’s insomnia hitting as hard as it always does the first few nights, when he hears the rustling start, just loud enough to hear over the noise from outside. There’s a pause, long enough that he’s almost asleep, when he hears it again. He lets that happen two more times before he decides to do something. 

They’re sleeping head to foot right now, everyone’s legs angled toward the cabin door, having seen enough summer camp slashers to take all the little precautions against getting murdered first. David sits up cross-legged and leans forward, so he’s hovering close to Patrick’s head, and peers over the worn wooden railing. 

“Hey,” he whispers as quietly as possible. 

He sees the Patrick-shaped figure flip over onto its stomach. “Hey.” 

“You okay?” 

“Yeah, sorry."

"'S’okay." David lays back down, closes his eyes and takes deep breaths through his nose, counting backwards from 100. He gets all the way to 27 and is _almost finally_ _asleep_ when the creak of Patrick's mattress sounds again. David doesn't mean to let out the heaviest sigh known to man, but he can't help it. The first day always leaves him weirdly worn out, and the morning is already much closer than he'd like. "Patrick?" 

"Uh-huh." Patrick's voice is pained, and David feels a flash of sympathy for the new kid who can't get comfortable on a mattress older than him. But then Patrick moves again, and David sits up, scrubbing a hand over his eyes.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah," Patrick sits up, too, with a loud creak from the bed frame, and David can see him grimace even in the dark. "I just…I don’t really love the dark.”

"Oh." David's not sure what he expected, but it definitely wasn't that.

"Sorry,” Patrick adds, scratching his head. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“You didn’t,” David says, too quickly. “I mean. It was more a keeping awake, but. It’s fine. It’s not easy to get used to sleeping here.” David smiles and shakes his head. He hopes there’s enough light that Patrick can see him. “It took me, like, a truly embarrassing number of years.”

“Oh yeah? How long?” Patrick sounds a little like he might be teasing, even though Patrick is the one who can’t sleep. If David is honest, he doesn’t hate it. 

“Like, four at least.” David shrugs a little, fingers twisting fingers. “My family, um. We — _they —_ actually own the camp?”

“Oh,” is all Patrick says, and it’s a two-letter word with two million meanings and David doesn’t know how he’s supposed to hear it when it comes out of Patrick’s mouth. “That’s, um. Wow.”

“What ‘wow’?”

“I’ve just never met anyone whose parents owned a summer camp before.”

“It’s a camp, not the diamond from _Titanic_.”

“The what?”

The sound David makes gets him a quick bark of a laugh, smothered by a pillow. “For the love of God, please tell me you’re joking. You haven’t seen _Titanic_ ? _Everyone_ has seen _Titanic._ ”

“Just like _everyone_ knows about the warm water fountains?” Patrick’s response comes quick, and steady, and David can hear the wry smile in his voice, even in the dark. 

“It’s possible I may be...slightly hyperbolic at times.”

“Only slightly?” But the smile is still there, and he rushes to add. “And I’m messing with you. Of course I’ve seen _Titanic._ ” 

David feels something in his chest twist, tighten, at the same time that his shoulders relax away from his ears and for the first time all summer he feels like he can take a deep breath. He grabs his pillow from behind him, and lays forward on his chest so that he’s head to head with Patrick, who follows suit and lays down too. 

“Well that’s good, because otherwise I’m not sure Camp Schitt could continue to allow your attendance.”

“Strict standards, I see.”

“The strictest.”

“I like strict. Makes things interesting.”

David’s cheeks catch fire, but he’s spared from answering by a gentle cough that definitely isn’t Patrick’s.

“Guys,” comes a tentative voice from below. Ted is unfailingly polite, even when he really has no cause to be. “Can we just go to sleep?” 

David falls asleep before Patrick does, still flipped in his bed, but only because there's a sudden drop in his restless shifting as his breaths grow long and steady. 

*

David sleeps facing the wrong way now, head-to-head with Patrick. Except it isn’t the wrong way, because Patrick is next to him, and nothing about being near Patrick is wrong. 

David brushes off questions from the guys about his new sleeping arrangement with a wave of his hand and a, “it’s feng shui, it’s really about the directional energy in the room? You wouldn’t understand,” in his most aloof voice. 

Patrick has to cover up a smirk every time, and it’s enough to keep up the act through the eye rolls from the rest of the cabin, if it means it keeps Patrick smiling at him and their shared joke. 

*

After a week of whispers well past midnight, they’ve had so many socks and paper airplanes thrown their way that David caves and pulls out his notebook, just to save them from the assault. Patrick catches on to the new plan almost immediately, and grins way too excitedly when he’s able to whip out a pen light like a fucking Boy Scout (which, David supposes, he actually is) and hand it over. 

So this is how they spend their nights now, passing notes back and forth like it’s math class, a random assortment of _what’s your favorite band?_ and _how have you never heard of Givenchy_ and _if the mess hall has turkey again tomorrow I’m going to hitchhike home_. 

More than once, when Patrick takes his time with a response, David loses himself in a fantasy of taking back his notebook to find a: 

_do you like me? Check one_ ⃞ _yes_ ⃞ _no_

But so far, David’s dreams are still working out better than his reality. 

*

“Mail call - Rose, David.” Sarah holds the postcard out to him, a small smirk on her face one day in late July. “First piece of mail all summer, huh?” She’s by far the crankiest of all the counselors.

He plucks it out of her fingers with a little ‘huh’ sound. That there are _still_ some people in the world who get off on keeping a tally of who gets _physical mail_ absolutely baffles him. Especially because, when it comes to Alexis, sometimes no news is good news. But he still feels the perpetual knot he keeps in his stomach for his sister loosen a little as he looks at the picture on the postcard. 

“Looks like your sister is somewhere tropical again,” Sarah says, her smile plasticy and sharp. 

David can play at that game though, so he just nods and waves the card in her direction.“Looks like! Shocked you managed to see through those blunt bangs. Did you pay someone to do that to you, or...?” 

She flips him off and he returns the favor, flouncing out of the mess hall in a way that would have made Alexis proud, if she could have seen it.

Which, she couldn’t, because Sarah was right — according to the postcard, she was halfway around the world, on the Amalfi coast with...Aaron Carter? David has stopped trying to keep track. 

Even as the Roses made a different kind of life for themselves after losing their money, finding success first with the motel, then a series of motels, then more commercial real estate and the camp, Alexis had managed to stay in touch with their wealthy, fabulous friends, maintaining her fabulous-by-association lifestyle. David, on the other hand, had stayed. And whenever Alexis came back after holidays away, the cracks between them were small enough to be invisible, but plentiful enough to never quite stop hurting. 

And now every summer, when the heat hits, Alexis takes off somewhere tropical and David heads off to camp. Again. And while he loves hearing from her, and knowing that at least one of them seems happy, it does mean he has one more paper receipt of her social prowess in comparison to his social ineptitude, and a postcard-shaped manifestation of his fear and anxieties for her safety.

He’s so lost in thought as he makes his way back to the cabin that he almost doesn’t notice someone has pulled up next to him.

“Hey, David,” Patrick says, passing by him on the packed dirt path between the field and the mess hall. He has a layer of sweat on his forehead, and his grey t-shirt clings to his body, darkening along his sternum, along his ribs, under his arms. David needs Patrick’s deodorant to stop smelling so fucking _good_.

“Hey, Patrick. Good show?”

“Game? No, I was just throwing the ball around with Ted. _Practice_ for the big game,” he says with a half-wink. David isn’t sure Patrick can do a full wink. 

“Is that soon, then?”

“Not exactly,” Patrick grins at him, which David doesn’t quite understand, but he’s saved from having to think about any further when Patrick notices the paper in his hand. “What’s that? ”

“Postcard,” David says, running and index finger along the edge, digging the corner into the soft pad of his finger. Patrick won’t stop staring at David’s hands, and David doesn’t know why, so he wraps his arms around himself and tucks his hands out of sight. “From my sister.”

“Oh yeah? Where’s she at?”

“Amalfi.”

That answer takes Patrick aback, his head shaking a fraction of an inch on his neck as his eyes go wide. There’s something close to a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Like, Italy? That’s —”

“Glamorous? Enchanting?”

“Far. You must miss her.”

“Oh. Um. It’s okay.” David feels heat on the back of his neck that he’s hoping to God is some kind of delayed sunburn from yesterday. “She’s gone a lot?”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t miss her,” Patrick says, holding his hand out, palm up, like he’s asking David to come with him on this conversational journey of agreement. “I don’t see my cousins, like, ever, and I still miss them all the time.”

“Yeah we don’t really _do_ that?” David cocks his head to the side and squints. He feels like he and Patrick are speaking two different dialects of the same language. 

“Don’t...miss each other?”

“Yeah. Mmhmm.” He feels a bead of sweat trickle down his neck and he swipes at it, forgetting he’s got the postcard in his hand, and he hisses as he feels the tiny, viscous swipe of a papercut. “Fuck!”

“Are you okay?” Patrick takes an immediate step towards him, eyes wide, hands raised like he’s going to...David doesn’t know what. Hug him? Swat his hands down until he can see the offending wound? It doesn’t matter, because David suddenly, very intensely doesn’t want to be here. This barely-anything of a conversation with Patrick about Alexis has put a weird feeling just underneath his ribcage, and all he really wants to do is go put the postcard in their box. 

“I’m fine,” David says, too harshly, and Patrick pulls up short, his hands slipping into his pockets at almost the exact same moment. It happens so quickly, David wonders if maybe he’d imagined what Patrick had been trying to do to begin with. “I need to go shower before lunch, so.”

He pushes past Patrick, sliding Alexis’s postcard in the back pocket of his black linen shorts and begins the march up the little hill to their cabin. It only takes three minutes, and he’s already drenched in sweat.

He throws himself on his bed and winces at the loud groan from the warped wood that fills the space. He slips his sunglasses off his forehead and onto his eyes, throwing an arm over his forehead in a true Victorian swoon. His forearm slides across the sweat on his brow and it makes him shiver in an unpleasant way, so he throws his arms spread-eagle and attempts to make sure no part of his body is touching another. He shifts his hips to get off a particularly nasty spring pressing into his lower black, and feels the edge of the postcard dig into his ass instead.

Groaning, he kind of shimmies on the bed until he can get his arm underneath him enough to grab the card out of his pocket. The bed screams beneath him and he groans, pressing the card to his chest. 

“God, someone really needs to oil the bed frames,” Patrick’s voice is full of smiles from where he stands, leaning long against the doorway.

David wants to throw himself into the sun. He pushes himself up to a sitting position and attempts a glare. “Patrick. What are you doing here?”

“You bolted so quickly, I wanted to make sure you weren’t back here dying of heat stroke or something.”

“Really?”

Patrick’s mouth twitches when he says, “uh-huh.”

“And that’s all. Just. The generous, caring nature of your heart?”

“Absolutely.”

David narrows his eyes and stares at him. “How was mail call, Patrick?”

He rocks back and forth on his heels a few times before pulling a stack of mail out from his back pocket. David’s first thought is how any one human being fits so much in their pockets; his second is a slap of jealousy so strong and stinging it brings tears to the corners of his eyes and an immediate headache to the back of his temples. 

“It’s so sucky that she does it like that,” Patrick says, walking until he can toss his mail on his own bunk, and then drops to the floor, cross-legged and looking up at David. David watches the color filter through the curls on the top of his head, light catching shades of amber like the sun through autumn birches. “Like, who makes getting mail into a competition?”

“Small, petty people with bad bangs and very little else,” he says bitingly. David climbs down the ladder and slides to the floor in front of Patrick, legs outstretched so they cross into Patrick’s space, his back against his bed frame for support. He’s glad to know that Patrick thinks Sarah’s little mail routine is crappy, too, even if he doesn’t have anything to worry about. “Looks like you made out okay, though,” he says, because he’s petty and can’t help himself. 

David can’t see Patrick’s face, because he’s staring at his hands, but his blush fills his voice as beautifully as it does his cheeks and he shrugs when he says, “My friends are used to writing, and I guess my parents talked some of my cousins into sending stuff..." he trails off, like he's not sure owes David an explanation."I usually spend the summer with my grandparents. Summers were catch-up time.”

"Were?”

For a new camper, Patrick has been able to keep his cards surprisingly close to the vest. He clears his throat and looks down at his hands, picking at a callous on the base of his thumb. “Yeah, this summer we didn’t need, um— “ he coughs into his fist and David notices a wetness in his eyes that wasn’t there before. David presses his lips together and his hand makes a small twitch in Patrick’s direction. 

“I’m sorry.”

Patrick makes a sound that’s a hiccup and a sob and a laugh all at the same time and he shrugs his shoulders, a big motion that brings his shoulders almost all the way above his ears. It looks goofy on his still slightly too long arms, and the swoop in the bottom of David’s stomach makes him feel deliciously sick. “It’s okay. You didn’t — couldn’t have known. Anyway, grandma decided to take this summer to go on a road trip with a bunch of her bingo friends, so mom and dad did some asking around, and here I am.”

“Here you are,” David says with a little nod. He kicks Patrick’s hip gently, the softest nudge of his low-tops into the soft flesh of Patrick’s body, and Patrick smiles. He reaches down and bangs lightly on the bottom of David’s shoe with a closed fist. David can feel the percussive knock up in the muscles of his leg, feel it echo in his kneecap and ping through his inner thigh, and he doesn’t think he’s ever had another human being touch the bottom of his foot, even with his shoes on. It’s the weirdest, yet least surprising realization he’s had in a long time, and because it catches him off guard, and because he kind of wants Patrick to do it again, he nudges Patrick’s hip again. 

Another nudge, another tap, and they keep going like that, some weird looping movement that he thinks is having a bit of a meditative effect on both of them, giving them both a little bit of alone togetherness to sort through...well, whatever thoughts needed sorting through. 

David isn’t used to being able to just _be_ with other people who aren’t Alexis or Stevie. And Stevie is gone for the summer, and Alexis isn’t really around much in general, and it’s left David feeling...tired.

He needs a break from always having to be _on_ , and he’s rapidly realizing he’s found that in Patrick. It’s amazing, and it’s terrifying, because David gets hooked on people easily. He knows that, and sometimes it has led him to... _questionable_ choices. Like making out with his best and only friend, even though he couldn’t afford to lose her. They’d been lucky to both make it out with their friendship in tact.

So David needs to be careful, he knows that. Rationally. Thankfully, Patrick’s sweet, straight, mid-range jock energy is helping with that, although not as much as it should be. 

Still, David doesn’t stop nudging. 

The dinner bell rings and pulls them out of their trance. Patrick jumps a little bit, and David giggles, which earns him an adorable scowl from Patrick, who pushes himself to his feet with a groan.

“You coming?”

“Of course. Just one second.” David stands and pulls his bunk out away from the wall, scooting behind it. It’s a tight fit, and he loses sight of Patrick for a second before he pokes his head back out and says, “If you ever tell anyone about this, I’ll be forced to run your underwear up the flagpole.” And then he’s gone, balancing precariously on one foot while he tries to jimmy up a loose floorboard. At one point, he slips, and he half-slides, half-falls into the corner between the bed and the wall up with a squawk. Eventually, he grabs an old metal cashbox and comes back around the bedframe with it.

“Have you been working out, David? Because that looked _effortless_.” 

David glares, which makes Patrick laugh, which makes David glare harder. He pops the box open with a clank and tosses the postcard inside. He takes a second to look down at the contents of the box, little smile crawling across his face, before he shoves it closed and back under the floor in one quick movement. He sides the bed back into place with a heave, and then he’s leaning up against the frame and looking at Patrick as nonchalantly as possible as his chest heaves.

“David…”

“Come on, let’s go.”

He charges for the front door, but he should know better than to try and run. Of course Patrick keeps up. 

Patrick crosses his arms and smiles. “David Rose, tell me that’s not —” 

“ — it’s not.”

“A box of postcards under your bed. From your sister.”

“No!” He insists, coming to a halt, Patrick’s steps stuttering to a stop beside him. “Some of them are from Stevie,” he follows up lamely.

“That sounds to me an awfully lot like,” Patrick leans close and drops his voice, “missing them.”

David rolls his eyes, but can’t stop the smile. “Underwear. Flagpole. Remember?”

Patrick mimes locking his lips. “Your secret is safe with me, David.” 

*

David hates swimming in the creek. The wet hair, the constant fear of some man-eating water bug, having to wear a bathing suit in front of people. 

But it’s sweltering outside, and the AC isn’t cutting it, and if he passes, he’ll literally be the only one left out.

He changes into a pair of long black board shorts with white stripes down the side, and throws on his Rick Owens hoodie for good measure, because the less time he’s shirtless, the better. 

Of course, he’s hemmed and hawed so much that by the time he gets down to the creek, everyone is already in the water. Which means taking his sweater off, in front of everyone, no distractions. 

David is reminding himself that no one actually cares, and that no one is looking – maybe the only helpful advice Alexis has ever given him – when Patrick climbs out of the creek, wearing long blue trunks and shirtless, glistening like a slow-mo scene out of a ‘90s romcom. Life is very, _very_ unfair, David thinks. 

“David!” Patrick is like a golden retriever, dashing toward him and grinning like it's been a year instead of an hour. “I thought you weren’t coming!” 

“Mhm, yeah,” is all David can muster while he’s forcing his eyes look directly at Patrick’s face and nowhere else. “I, uh. It's, like, really hot? So,” he finishes with an awkward flourish of his hand at his bathing suit bottoms. 

Patrick nods enthusiastically. “Hurry up, we’re about to play a game of chicken but we have an odd number. We can be a team if you’re up for it?” 

Which, well, David should hate this, hate the thought of getting his hair wet and playing obnoxious games that will almost definitely end in injury but. Patrick on his shoulders, so —

“Okay, um, just let me,” and he unzips his hoodie as quickly as he can, and turns to lay it neatly on the table behind him. When he turns back around, Patrick is staring. 

“W-what?” David asks, because if Patrick is going to make some comment about David’s chest and back hair, he may as well get it out now.

“Oh, nothing. That’s just. A really nice bathing suit.” 

“Oh. Okay. Should we…?” he says, pointing to the water. 

And it turns out that the game _is_ fun, and not just because Patrick has his thighs wrapped around David’s neck, David’s hands digging into them while Patrick’s muscles ripple under his hands for balance. And not because David is just, like, _so_ _pan_ and god everyone is _so_ beautiful. The game is legitimately fun. 

They lose to Mutt and Twyla — she’s surprisingly strong despite her tiny frame — because David is laughing so hard that Patrick comes toppling off his shoulders, the long line of his chest sliding down David's arms as they flail for balance. And when a still-laughing Patrick grips onto David’s shoulders because it’s _just_ too deep for him to stand comfortably, well. David _really_ doesn’t mind losing.

*

Too late, David finds out Patrick has signed up for the end-of-session talent show. 

“ _Why_ ?” is all he can think to say when Patrick tells him. He can’t imagine willingly going on stage to sing in front of his _peers_ \-- Christmas parties in front of his parents’ friends are bad enough. 

Patrick grins at him like there’s some inside joke between the two of them, but David isn’t in on it. “Because, David, it’s fun.”

And it turns out, when Patrick had said _fun_ what he meant was that he was going to pick the most embarrassing song possible and sing it right to David. No, not _to_ David. _At_ David. Right into his face, with Patrick’s eyes all big and shiny and aggressively sincere. Which is how David has to make it through three horrifying minutes of Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” while Patrick makes pointed eye contact with him. Patrick barely makes it through without laughing. 

Later that night, by the beam of Patrick’s pen light, David scribbles '“All Star" - Smash Mouth' in the margins of his “To Remember” page. 

*

_Do you think you’re going to come back next summer?_

David has waited until the last possible minute to ask, 2 AM the night before parents and buses start arriving for 8 AM pickups, which means now he has to scribble it in his notebook and pass it to Patrick with the pen light. 

David watches Patrick’s face as he reads the note, grins, and puts the pen light in his mouth so he can write a reply. He hands the notebook back. 

_Definitely. I already talked to my parents. They said yes :)_

He even does the sideways smiley, like some kind of dork who has spent too much time on AIM, despite not having internet at home.

David doesn’t even bother trying to hide his smile as he clicks off the pen light and says a quiet goodnight to Patrick for the last time that summer. He's always trusted the dark to keep his secrets before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic title from "Twinkling Lights" by Annalise Emerick, truly the perfect camp song. Chapter titles taken from various songs mentioned, or from songs on the Death Cab For Cutie album "Plans", which is truly ship_to_sail's perfect camp album
> 
> All of (see: ALL OF) our love and thanks to [helvetica_upstart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/), who read this when it was at 13k, and then had that monster triple on her in size, and still read it two more times. She's a fucking gift. 
> 
> Come hang out with us on tumblr at [ships-to-sail](ships-to-sail.tumblr.com) and [storieswelove](storieswelove.tumblr.com)!


	2. Kick my Ass If He Knew the Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stevie is back! Tags have been updated to reflect the general garbage teenage David and Stevie absolutely would have gotten up to.

**2005: Summer Before Grade 10**

Another school year passes in a haze of people he doesn't really like, classes he doesn't really care about, and David spends so much time forcing himself not to think about Stevie and Patrick that it gives him headaches. There’s a running clock in the back of his mind at all times, and he’s taken out his favorite memories, running them over and over in his brain so often as he falls asleep that he’s afraid he’s going to wear them out, like he used to do with his favorite tapes from Rose Video. But Patrick and Stevie’s families don’t have internet — or sort of do, but just for their parents? David’s not sure what to do about it, though, and he tries writing about a dozen letters before he just gives up and contents himself with making lists of things to tell them both as soon as summer strikes.

*

Stevie is back at camp this year, so for the first time in his life, David has two really good friends, and they’re going to be in the same place, at the same time. Which is exciting. And terrifying. Because they might hate each other. And then what is he supposed to do? 

But, it turns out, David was worried about the wrong thing. 

Patrick and Stevie get along  _ too _ well. 

They’ve only been at camp four days when David walks into the mess hall to find Stevie and Patrick cackling over a piece of paper Patrick is holding. 

“Good morning,” David says pointedly as he drops down next to Patrick. He neglects to remove his sunglasses. “Is there an email chain I’m not on or...?” 

Patrick and Stevie look at each other and then both smirk at David. “Yes,” Stevie says, almost sweetly. 

“So you’re just, like, having morning…” he reaches around for a word, “meetings without me?” 

Patrick snorts. “Well, David, maybe if it took you,” he looks at his watch, “less than an hour to get out of bed after the wakeup call, you, too, would get to participate in our morning meetings.” 

He’s teasing David, and David doesn’t hate it. Still, he huffs. “I just don’t understand why we have to wake up at 7:30 in the middle of the summer. Isn’t that torture enough during the school year?” He pulls Patrick’s plate over to himself and starts eating the home fries.

“Oh, sure, David, no problem. I was finished,” Patrick says, voice dripping in sarcasm, but he doesn’t take his plate back. 

David looks up to find Stevie smiling knowingly at him. He looks back down at his potatoes. 

It’s too early for this passive harassment. 

*

Having Stevie back isn’t  _ all _ fun and games. 

“I fucking told you picking flowers was a bad idea,” David shrieks, furiously scratching at red, rashy side of his face. “But no, your little stoner ass insisted. ‘ _ It’ll be fun, David! _ ’ Does this look  _ fun _ to you?” 

“Oh my god, shut up and give me the cortisone already, I’m  _ dying _ !” She snatches the white tube out of his hand and starts to slather it on her arms, while David keeps aiming incoherent shrieks in her direction.

*

David’s dirty little secret this summer isn’t so much a secret as it is a fear — a fear that bubbles to the surface whenever Stevie laughs hard at something Patrick says, or Patrick discovers their shared — awful, if you ask David — taste in music. 

Because it wouldn’t be the first time a crush of his falls for his friend. At least that wouldn’t be as bad as all the times they’ve fallen for Alexis, no matter how many times David tries to remind them that she’s his  _ little  _ sister. 

And Patrick? Well, Patrick is so clearly, painfully straight that David is the dictionary definition of ‘no chance.’ Not that he thinks he would've had much of a chance regardless — he’s seen Patrick’s arms, and his eyes, and the way he's just effortlessly good at everything he does. So he tries not to spend all his days hyper aware of every time Patrick and Stevie touch, tallied up against all the times he’s touched each of them, individually. He spirals on the thought a lot, because David’s forte is spiraling.

But the fact remains: He wants nothing more than for his friends to be happy. Even if it means pretending he's fine, that seeing Patrick and Stevie hold hands or link elbows doesn’t make David’s palms sweat and his head hurt. Even if it means this precariously balanced triangle ends up becoming a straight line instead.

*

“Oh my God, so. I love him,” Stevie says two weeks into camp, slipping into a seat at the back of the mess hall during weekly movie night, stealing a handful of David’s gummy worms, completely ignoring  _ How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days _ . Which is just. Completely incomprehensible to David. Who  _ doesn't  _ want to watch this movie? 

“Love who?” David’s having a hard time looking away from the way Kate Hudson’s back looks in that yellow ball gown, and he’s only half listening.

“Patrick!” Stevie huffs like it’s the most obvious answer in the world. That gets David attention, because of course it does, and he feels a cold sweat break out along the back of his neck. It feels like someone dropped the AC in the room by several degrees, and he wraps his hands around his biceps. "His mom sent two bags of that puppy chow stuff I love and he gave me an entire bag!"

“Oh. Yeah. Cool.” He’s not sure what else to say. 

“Okay but like, isn’t that awesome? Like, he’s basically vanilla pudding in the shape of a thumb, but. He’s funny, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like he might be the nicest person I’ve ever met?”

“Yep.” She goes quiet for a minute and, in a brief but foolish flash of hope, David thinks maybe she's going to drop it. But then she smiles at the side of his face, and even with his eyes trained on the movie, he can feel how predatory it is.

“You ever notice that he’s got these eyes that, like," Stevie makes her eyes go all wide, and David swallows thickly. "Plus he keeps touching his mouth all the time? Like, what is that?”

David clears this throat; he can feel the blood rush to his cheeks. Stevie rolls her eyes and snorts, and it's the snort that digs under his skin so hard, so fast that he moves down a seat, keeping his eyes on the screen. He’s watching the movie so hard, he thinks he might be about to burn a hole in the screen.

Stevie scoots down into the seat next to him again and punches him on the shoulder. “David.”

“What?!” He doesn’t know what Stevie is doing, but all he wants is to keep watching Matthew McConaughey chase Kate Hudson down on that stupid little scooter so that he'll stop thinking about Patrick Brewer worrying the edge of his thumb with his perfect white teeth.

"Will you just look at me?"

"I'm trying to watch the movie, Stevie."

"A movie I know for a fact that you've seen, like, fifty times in the last year."

"So!?" He's doing that manic whisper shout that he hates but can’t seem to control, and he gets up and moves two seats this time, hoping she'll leave it.

But she's Stevie, so of course she doesn't leave it, and no sooner does her ass touch the seat next to him than he's moving again. They're chasing each other down the row of chairs, none too quietly, and they're quickly running out of chairs. David hits the last one and is ready to turn the corner into the row behind him when he either trips, or Stevie pushes him, or both, and he's stumbling towards the door as Stevie's hand snakes around his bicep,  _ shockingly  _ strong. 

She pushes him outside as he squirms and hisses, "what the hell?!"

As soon as they're around the corner and standing along the treeline, she lets him go with a little shove.

"This is kidnapping," he practically shouts at her. "You just, like, assaulted me!"

"We can call the police as soon as we're done, if you'd like," she deadpans as she crosses her arms in front of her.

"Don't think I won't."

"David, what's going on? You're being like 400% weirder than your normal self."

"400%, huh?"

"You just made me chase you across the mess hall in some drunk ducks version of musical chairs, so at this point 400 seems like kind of a lowball."

"What did you even want to talk about, Stevie? Patrick?" David says his name like a silly, small thing, and it kills something inside of him as he does it.

"Well, yeah. Just. The summer. It's been. I haven't hated it, is all I was trying to say." She shoves her hands in her pockets, her shoulders slumping like they always do when the force of her vulnerability comes up against the wall of her cynicism. 

"Because of Patrick," David says.

"Because of  _ you  _ and Patrick. And me. It works. Which is weird. Because we hate everybody." And it must be a testament to the power of dark shadows and tree cover that Stevie is being so...open. So sincere. 

"So you and Patrick are friends."

"Of course we're–are you having a stroke?"

"No!" He shrieks and buries his hands in his face with a groan. "It's just...you and I were friends once."

Stevie’s face contorts with a scowl. "We still are friends, you dumbass."

"No, like. We were  _ friends  _ once," he puts the air quotes into his voice.

"Jesus, David. Gross! Are you –  _ really?!" _

"What really?"

"David. I don’t want to make out with Patrick."

"I never said—"

“I  _ knew _ it!” She cuts him off, and she has that  _ awful _ look on her face, the one she always gets when she has David’s number. 

“What?” he tries, and fails, to ask innocently. 

“You’ve thought about it, haven’t you?” 

"No!"

"You're  _ such _ an awful liar."

"I am not! I swear to you that I have absolutely never thought about making out with Patrick."

“Oh, okay. So he’s just like, a brother, huh?” 

“Yep, mhm. Like a brother. Or like, a cousin. A completely sexless cousin.” David hears it. He hears exactly what he’s saying as he says it, but there’s no stopping his mouth when it starts down some incoherent path. He inwardly cringes. 

“Oh, I see! A sexless cousin. Makes sense.” She stares at him, and waits for him to break first. It’s their usual dance, and normally he can hold his own, but today it makes his skin itch. 

"Oh my  _ God _ . What?! I  _ don’t _ !"

"Mmhmm. So then we're in agreement – neither one of us has any desire to make out with Patrick. We're all...just friends."

"Yes. Exactly."

"Great!" She's cheerfully chirpy in the way she is when she thinks she's right about something. But before he can insist,  _ again _ , that the last thing he wants to do is make out with Patrick's adorable face, she links her arm through his and they march back to the mes hall, sinking into seats just in time for the credits to roll and the lights to come up.

“Oh, damn. We missed it.” Stevie couldn’t sound less upset.

“I hate you,” David sighs, standing and taking her arm again as they head back out towards their cabins.

*

“Incorrect!” David shouts, far too loudly for a gentle afternoon of tie-dying. “‘Building A Mystery’ is  _ clearly _ the better Sarah song!” 

“Oh, okay,” says Stevie, with that fake chuckle that David hates so fucking much. She’s leaning over a bucket of red dye and dipping her white T-shirt in carefully, not even giving him the eye contact he deserves for such an important discussion. “Except it’s not. It’s obviously ‘Sweet Surrender.’” 

“How can you  _ think _ that? It’s just so—“ 

“Incorrect?” Patrick asks innocently as he pulls his shirt out of the dye. 

David flips him off, and Patrick peers over at David’s project. “David, I think the point of tie-dye is to  _ add _ color, not to bleach. You know, it’s okay to wear something other than black and white. I promise it won’t bite.” 

“It’s called an acid wash, and look who’s talking,” David snips back, pointing at Patrick’s once-white shirt, now layered in different shades of blue. 

Patrick shrugs. “What can I say? Blue really brings out my eyes.” 

David rolls his eyes while Stevie and Patrick laugh. 

Menaces, the both of them. 

*

They get Patrick high for the first time one sweltering evening in July. The three of them escape down to the creek after dinner, one-track minds set on catching a cool breeze off of the water. 

The breeze helps. The weed helps more. 

Stevie pulls a fresh joint from the top pocket of her flannel, and David pulls out a lighter from the back of his Nili Lotan shorts. They pass the joint between the two of them a few times before David catches Patrick watching David’s mouth as he takes a hit. 

Stevie must clock it too, because she takes the joint from him and holds it out to Patrick. 

Patrick looks uncertain, and Stevie starts to pull her hand back, but he must change his mind at the last minute, because he leans forward and swipes it from her. David, gleeful, claps and rolls back in the grass. Okay, so he might be a little high already. 

Stevie coaxes Patrick through it. “That’s it, Patrick, nice deep inhale. Now hold it in your lungs for a few seconds.”

Patrick does as he’s told, and in a couple seconds he’s shaking with a beginner’s cough. Stevie claps him on the back and takes the joint before he drops it. 

But Patrick gets the hang of it, and soon enough they’re all splayed out in the grass, watching the sunset across the creek, loose limbed and giddy as they pass the joint among them. 

“David,” Patrick says suddenly, when the sun is at its most orange and casting a warm glow on everything around them. “Look at your skin! It’s like,  _ perfect _ .” He lazily plops his hand on David’s cheek. David, too high to care about the consequences, nuzzles into Patrick’s touch. 

“And Stevie!” Patrick says suddenly, pulling his hand away just as abruptly; David whines at the lack of contact. Patrick flips to Stevie on his other side and touches her cheek. “You have skin too!” 

Stevie collapses into a fit of giggles, an infectious thing that soon has all three of them clutching their sides long past sunset. 

*

It turns out, Patrick Brewer is  _ extremely _ affectionate under the influence. 

David had chalked it up to a one-time incident, expecting the memory of Patrick’s hand against his cheek to carry him through the summer. 

Instead, cheap whisky before dinner on a Tuesday leads to a Julia Stiles marathon in the rec room, Patrick’s head in David’s lap halfway through  _ 10 Things I Hate About You _ . A joint before breakfast on Saturday energizes Patrick, and he drags David and Stevie on a hike through the woods, the three of them arm-in-arm. 

And when Stevie passes on a giant bottle of white wine in favor of a pick-up game of kickball, it means the boys are left to share between the two of them. They’ve barely made a dent in the bottle before Patrick is nuzzling David’s neck, and telling David how good he smells, and drooling on David’s grey Givenchy baseball sweater when he falls asleep two-thirds of the way into the bottle. 

So, yeah, Patrick Brewer is extremely affectionate under the influence. 

They never talk about it once they’re sober. 

*

“David!” Twyla’s voice carries across the clearing. “Those are incredible!” 

They’re making candles, the one camp activity David actually likes. It’s soothing, dipping the weighted wicks between the liquid wax and the buckets of water. And Twyla is right. He’s miles better at it than everyone else, the result of summers on summers of repetition. “Mmmm. Practice makes perfect.” He preens a little bit. Whatever. They are  _ very _ good. 

“Y’know,” Patrick says as he watches David give his latest set one final dip in the wax. “You never actually told me why your family owns the camp?” 

“Oh my god, really?” David’s brow is furrowed in concentration as he pulls the rack out of the dip and moves them to dry. “My dad bought it as a joke for me when I turned nine, but then he lost all of his money so this is their business now. Well, one of them. But, as you’ve noticed, they tend to stay away. They can’t stand being out in the country.” He waves his hand around them with a flourish. “I mean, can you blame them? It’s all sunburns and bugs and bulk laundry. Ah, no, here, like this,” he says, and puts his hand over Patrick’s to guide him through a steadier dip. 

“Well,” says Patrick, smiling down at his own, solitary candle in the wax bucket. “It’s not all bad.” 

*

Stevie walks in on the two of them listening to music in David’s bed one day, lying on their stomachs, bodies pressed together shoulder to toe, a necessity for fitting two teenage boys in one twin bed. Not that David is complaining. 

“Whatcha doing?” asks Stevie, startling David, who hadn’t heard her come in. 

“Oh, hey Stevie,” Patrick says, and David feels him tilt his body a couple inches to the left, breaking their contact. David tries not to think about what it means. "We were just listening to the new Death Cab, David managed to get an advanced copy?" The empty look on her face is the only answer he needs. "Join us!" He reaches over for the CD player and starts "Someday You Will Be Loved" from the top. 

"Things look a little cramped already," she says, arms crossed over her chest and eyebrow quirked. David is glaring at her like he wants to set her on fire with his mind, but Patrick is blissfully unaware as he fiddles with the volume and plops back down to the mattress. His Bluejays t-shirt rides up a little, exposing a few inches of his lower back, and David’s eyes are drawn to it like a magpie to a quarter. Stevie watches him watch Patrick and just rolls her eyes.

“You can jump into my bunk, the headphones will reach” Patrick insists, reaching across to his bed and dropping his backpack to the ground to make space for her. 

“No, it’s really okay,” Stevie says, leaning against the bunk bed across the room from David’s, watching them. 

“Are you sure?” David asks, and his voice comes out sounding so plastic, so sharp and strange in his mouth, that even Patrick looks at him, brow furrowed. Stevie snorts, which doubles down both David’s glare and Patrick’s confusion. 

“Yeah, I’m sure. I promised Twyla I’d come help her plan the trust walk for the babies tonight.”

“You?” Patrick asks. 

“Yes, me! I’ll have you know, the children love me.”

“Do they?” There could not be more disbelief in David’s voice.

Stevie shrugs, her smile turning to something with a sharper edge. “Who knows. But Twyla asked for help, so.”

“Uh-huh. Hoping maybe you’ll get some of her chocolate chip cookies as a thank you?”

“Well. They are award-winning.”

“Mm, those sound good. Bring us the extras?” Patrick is skipping through songs again, staring at the track list on the back of the CD case. 

“Oh, I don’t think Stevie will be sharing any of Twyla’s cookies,” David deadpans. 

Stevie just shakes her head and mumbles a goodbye. She flips David off behind her back as she walks away and he laughs, loud and bright, until Patrick cues up “Brothers on a Hotel Bed.” 

_ God fucking damn it.  _

*

It takes four days for Stevie to call him out. He’s hiding in the rec room, racing through the last chapter of  _ The DaVinci Code  _ when she finds him. 

“So, what’s going on with you and Patrick?” she says, smirking.

He’s eyeballs deep in the plot of his book, so all he can do is blink at her while he tries to process what she’s asked. It hits him and the air leaves his lungs. “No-nothing. What? What do you mean?” 

“You just both looked so  _ cozy _ the other day.” 

“Oh my God this again?! We’re  _ friends _ .” He attempts an eye roll. He’s eighty-seven percent sure he pulls it off. 

Stevie looks like the cat that ate the canary. “Mmh. Right. Friends. He was in your bed.” 

“Because we were listening to  _ music _ .” 

“Oh, I see. Is that your new bonding move? Are you going to invite Ted into your bunk to read some Archie comics?” 

“Whatever.” 

“David!” she says, and she’s laughing a little. “You were in your bed, in an empty cabin, practically spooning the guy. Come on.” 

All David can do is scoff at her. “Stevie…he’s a baseball-playing jock who has never seen a Sandra Bullock movie in his life. He’s straighter than an arrow. And besides, I told you. I’m not interested.” 

“Sure, okay. Well, next time there’s a  _ straight _ boy in your bed you’re just ‘not interested’ in,” she shakes her head in a fake, girly laugh as she says it, “could you let me know?” She looks at him pointedly. “You know, like  _ platonic _ hangs. Speaking of, maybe I'll go see if Twyla wants to  _ listen _ to that blink-182 album with me.” 

Her smile is so smug that David balls up the piece of notebook paper he’s been using as a bookmark and throws it at her. “Mmk, have fun with that,” he says, and goes back to his book. 

A few seconds pass and he can feel Stevie’s eyes boring into the top of his head. He looks up. Stevie is grinning impossibly wider. “I like this for you.” She ducks out of the room before he can lob anything else at her head.

*

David’s got a red plastic cup in his hand, but there’s no alcohol in it, which feels like it should violate some kind of inherent law of nature. Twyla is just finishing up plucking her way through a surprisingly cheery cover of “Songbird” on the ukulele, which she’d started by dedicating to Stevie, and David feels like every nerve in his body is about to catch fire and immolate him. It doesn’t help that Stevie is standing next to him, smiling, occasionally humming along like she’s actually  _ enjoying  _ herself. 

David tenses from the second they announce Patrick’s name, and it only gets worse while Patrick is checking the tune on his guitar. But then, Patrick starts singing, and David is absolutely positive no jury would convict him for the arson he’s considering if they just heard his side of the story.

Because Patrick is on stage singing “Teenage Dirtbag,” and David hates him  _ so much _ because he hates this song so. Fucking. Much. And Patrick knows it — David has pitched a fit any time anyone has played it the last two months, because it somehow became the unofficial camp anthem this summer. 

And Patrick is just standing on stage, staring David down with a twinkle in his screaming eyes, singing this awful song in his beautiful voice, and maybe David will just spontaneously combust and burn down the building with the heat of his own body and spare himself the trial by jury all together.

When Patrick walks over to him with a demonic grin that could rival Stevie’s, all David can do is shake his head while he focuses all his will power on not smiling. “I hate you.” 

“No, you don’t,” Patrick says, still smiling.

“Well, I hate that song,” David huffs and crosses his arms, which makes Patrick laugh.

“Kind of the whole point, David.” He knocks into David’s shoulder as they stand against the wall together. Mutt is closing out the night with his annual performance of “Closing Time” and they just stand and watch until David notices Patrick’s shoulders shaking in silent laughter and a small snort escapes. It’s enough to push David over the edge and he pushes them both out of the hall and into the night air before they burst into laughter.

*

“See you next year?” Patrick’s hands are shoved in the pocket of his jeans and his duffel bags are on the floor at his feet. He should be on the bus already, but the thing rolled into camp with engine troubles, so now it’s David’s turn to leave camp first. Stevie’s aunt has just pulled up to pick up her and David — Mr. Rose will pick David up from Maureen’s hotel later, after camp has officially been shuttered. 

“Duh,” David says with an eye roll. “Like they’d ever let me escape.” Like he would ever want to.

“Well,” Patrick smiles at the ground, his eyes shuttered and shy, a hand playing with the brim of his Maple Leafs hat. “At least we can endure the suffering together, right?”

David tucks the corner of his lip under his top teeth, afraid he’ll frighten Patrick if he smiles as radiantly as he wants to. “Yeah. There’s that, at least.” 

Before David realizes what is happening, Patrick is pulling his hands out of his pockets and wrapping David in a quick, tight hug. “Take care of yourself, David. Talk to you soon, maybe?”

“We can talk whenever you’d like,” is the last thing he gets out before Stevie’s aunt honks again and Stevie yells her favorite string of expletives out the window. He rolls his eyes and Patrick laughs and David lugs his bags across the dirt and into the trunk of Maureen’s Oldsmobile.

He’s never felt this tug in his chest before, driving away from camp, and it takes him weeks to shake the feeling that he’s forgetting something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title taken from "Teenage Dirtbag," because we're trash. 
> 
> Daily requisite massive thanks to [helvetica_upstart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/) for the wildly enthusiastic beta. 
> 
> Come hang out with us on tumblr at [ships-to-sail](ships-to-sail.tumblr.com) and [storieswelove](storieswelove.tumblr.com)!


	3. The Fire in Your Heart is Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is older, everyone is angstier — we've never missed being teenagers less.

**2006: Summer Before Grade 11**

The next summer, they’re all back together, and it feels right. But it’s also the first summer Patrick officially leaves a girlfriend at home, a sweet, quiet, redhead named Rachel who David hears all about as he helps Patrick tuck a fitted sheet around his bed, helps him smooth down pillowcases and fold the blanket his mother made him, which he brings every summer even though he’s never once needed it. It’s a familiar settling-in routine that feels foreign now, as though Rachel herself were standing and watching them. 

So everything feels right, and the same — but also not the same or right at all as they settle into summer.

*

“Where’d you learn to do this?” Stevie asks. 

They’re high on some particularly good weed that Mutt sold them, and Patrick is sitting on top of the picnic table, braiding Stevie’s hair into one, long Dutch braid from above. He’s surprisingly good at it. 

“I have like six girl cousins. They made me learn when we were kids. Do you have a hair tie, Stevie?” 

She hands it up to him from her seat on the bench, and Patrick wraps the elastic at the base of the brain in a couple neat twists, and tucks a couple daisies he plucked on their walk into the braid for good measure. 

“Your turn, David!” he says, and swings his legs from around Stevie so that he’s got one foot on either side of David, knees bracketing David’s shoulders from behind. 

David leans lazily to his left, resting his weight against Patrick’s leg. “My hair isn’t long enough,” David says, but doesn’t try to stop him as he wraps a hand around each of Patrick’s ankles, dipping his fingers inside his socks, tracing little circles on Patrick’s ankle bones. 

Patrick hums and tries for a small French braid at the front of David’s head. “Mmmm, you’re right,” he says, but his hands stay in David’s hair, carding through it softly until they realize the time, and Patrick has to run back or he’ll miss his call with Rachel from the camp payphone. 

* 

They sneak away after dinner sometimes, to roast whatever snacks they’ve snatched or stashed or saved from various care packages. Sometimes it’s pineapple, occasionally hot dogs, and once even a grilled cheese. Sometimes Patrick brings his guitar. Sometimes Stevie joins them, which inevitably devolves into a three-way ribbing session that keeps them out way later than they ever plan to. 

Sometimes, though, it’s just the two of them, and David wishes he could stop time and make those nights drag out even longer. It’s a tradition that quickly becomes David’s absolutely favorite part of any given summer. It’s an event that combines his two favorite things — meticulous menu crafting, and Patrick. 

Which is why it only figures that of course, in a summer where everything is just to the left of okay, they can’t seem to find the time to actually sneak away. First, the baseball team does  _ shockingly  _ well against the neighboring camps, which means an uptick in night games. Then Stevie gets roped in to helping with the summer musical, meaning she’s spending all day trying to hustle through choreography, and most of her nights asleep by dinner or whining about how bad her feet hurt. 

And so, David is doing the things he always does, squirreling away all their favorite snacks until the moment the stars actually align and he gets his best friends back. 

Six weeks into the summer, and only two weeks left until they go home, and the Fates finally decide to be kind to David. The musical has officially wrapped, and the baseball team took home the championship, so not only are his friends back, but they’re ecstatic, and David couldn’t be more thrilled for them. Seriously. Just. The most excited.

He’s packing the picnic basket for their snack marathon, when Patrick plunks a cardboard box down on his bed with a dramatic groan. David rolls his eyes, keeping his focus on the tetris of fitting in both the tupperware of caramel sauce  _ and  _ the rainbow jimmies that are Stevie’s favorite.

The tell-tale sound of a chip bag makes his head snap up.

“Whatcha got there?”

“Care package.”

David’s brain begins to race at the sudden expansion of possibilities. He’s made a careful plan and culinary itinerary, but Marci sends some of the  _ best  _ homemade goodies, and there’s always room for a little last minute editorial flexibility. “Did your mom send her brownie-butter tart combos?”

“No, but I’ll make sure to tell her you asked about them. Again.”

“Feel free. I feel no shame about loving your mom’s delicious goodies.”

“You sure you want me to tell her that?” Patrick’s still pulling snacks out of the box, but David watches him raise a brow in profile. 

“Yeah, no you know what nevermi— what’s that?”

Patrick’s just pulled a plastic bag of pepperettes out of the box, and Marci has never  _ once  _ sent Patrick anything she hadn’t baked herself.

“Oh, Rachel knows we’ve been missing our s’mores nights, so she sent me a box of snacks, says in her note that these taste amazing roasted.”

“Oh.  _ Rachel _ said.” David doesn’t know why he says her name like that, like it’s a four-letter word. He can feel the corner of his mouth lift up in a sneer, and there’s so much vitriol in his voice so fast that Patrick does an actual, honest-to-god double take. 

“Yeah. She and her brother used to make them when they went camping with her folks.”

“Aren’t you lucky she sent you some, then. Nothing like  _ mixing _ things up,” he says with a roll of his eyes so hard, he’s surprised they don’t fall out of his head. 

Because this  _ sucks _ . Because no matter how inevitable it was that Patrick would find some cute girl next door to date, it doesn’t make the aching feeling in David’s chest any less cavernous — especially because she’s not  _ doing _ anything but being nice, and thoughtful, and considerate of Patrick’s friends, and David still sort of hates her a little bit. But if Patrick is happy, then David can deal with it, because Patrick being happy is all that matters, except —  _ fuck _ , David can’t even have a fucking s’mores night for himself without Rachel inserting herself from hundreds of miles away? 

“Okay,” Patrick says with a little furrow of his brow and shrug of his shoulders. “You know — she’s sent a ton of stuff, and with the way this summer’s been, I don’t know if we’ll get another chance to use it. Why don’t we just take all this tonight?”

David can’t stop the little burst of air that escapes his lips. It sounds like he’s been punched in the stomach, and that’s exactly how he feels, because he’s standing here staring at a basket of food he’s spent all summer putting together, six weeks thinking through and re-thinking through because if they only get one night, he’s going to make sure it’s the best night they can get. And it was all for fucking nothing. Because Rachel knows about their s’mores nights, and knows that they haven’t had one all summer. And she knows, because Patrick told her. Of course he did. That’s the kind of thing you tell the person you’re dating about your summers at camp. It’s a slap in the face reminder of the entire life that Patrick has that he shares with Rachel, and not David. David gets eight weeks — mosquito bites, sunscreen, and these rare times around the campfire when the chocolate is melty and secrets feel easier to tell. And Rachel gets….everything else. And now, turns out, she gets that, too. And David knows he’s not being fair, or kind, or rational, really, but he doesn’t care. The only thing he’s been looking forward to for weeks is now the last thing on Earth he feels like doing. 

“You know what, that sounds like an  _ excellent _ plan,” he makes a show of picking up the backpack he’d been packing up off the bed and dropping it on the floor, nudging it under Ted’s bed. “You and Stevie enjoy.”

“Me and...David, what are you talking about?”

“Nothing! Just that you and Stevie should  _ definitely  _ enjoy Rachel’s little box of goodies tonight.”

“Me and Stevie.”

David climbs up and flings himself stomach down onto his bunk. “Yeah, I think I’m going to sit this one out.” He presses a fist to his mouth and makes a pathetic fake-coughing sound. “I don’t feel super great.”

“Are you serious right now?!” Patrick’s standing, leaning against the wooden bedframe, elbows on the edge of David’s mattress, and he’s glaring at David like David’s not speaking to him in English. “We’ve been looking forward to doing this  _ all summer _ .”

“Have we? You guys have been so busy,” David trails off and picks an invisible thread off his immaculate comforter.

Patrick clears his throat, his voice full of a strained patience when he speaks. “David. Is there something you want to talk about?”

“What could I possibly want to talk about, Patrick?”

He stares at Patrick with a single eyebrow raised, his eyes defiant and sharp, his mouth set in a straight line. He feels a fire in his chest, a cold and scraping kind of flame that’s the opposite of the liquid warmth that usually fills his abdomen when Patrick looks at him this long. Patrick's jaw is clenched as his fingers curl around the bed frame until his knuckles are white. He sighs heavily through his nose.

“Nothing. I guess.”

“Uh-huh. You better go. It’s getting dark, and I know how you feel about having to light a campfire in the dark.” David rolls over and faces the wall, screwing his eyes shut and forcing an iron stillness into the muscles of his back so that Patrick can’t see him shaking. Silence stretches between them, but Patrick is still there. David can feel the burn of his gaze between his shoulder blades.

David counts to ten, and then to thirty, and then he’s almost to a hundred before Patrick pushes off the frame and David hears him grab the box from his bed.

“Absolutely ridiculous,” he hears Patrick mumble, and he presses his lips together, wants to have the upper hand, knows he doesn’t need to make it any worse.  _ Shouldn’t _ make it any worse. 

“That’s me,” he singsongs from the bed, and he knows he’s not imaging the disgusted sound that Patrick makes as the screen door to the cabin slams shut behind him. 

*

Stevie corners him the next day. “So what the hell is going on between you and Patrick?”

“Nothing.” He’s hiding in the arts and crafts room, going through buckets of markers to test and toss the dried out ones. He’s sweaty, and he’s bored, and he’s legitimately running out of things to do to keep himself busy and away from Patrick. 

“You just decided that today was the day you’d revamp the art supplies?”

“Someone needs to do it.”

“No, they don’t.” She’s sitting on the edge of the table, arms crossed, staring at him. He goes through three more markers before he finally meets her eyes. 

“What do you want, Stevie?”

“I want you to stop hiding in the art cabin and fix whatever you did with Patrick so that the last two weeks of summer don’t  _ suck _ .”

“Why do you automatically assume it’s something I did?”

“So it’s something Patrick did?”

“No, he didn’t — there’s nothing. Everything is fine.” His voice pitches, sharp and shrill, and he’s afraid he’s going to cut himself on it. She presses the pads of her fingers into her eyes. He goes back to rifling through the markers, desperate to keep his hands busy. 

“Okay, David. If everything is fine, I’m going to go. I’m going to go sit at our table, alone, and eat lunch,  _ alone,  _ while you hide in here and Patrick pretends he’s not dying of heat stroke reorganizing the equipment shed.”

“It’s like fifty degrees out there!” he says before he remembers that he’s not supposed to care.

“Thirty-five, but close enough.”

“He’s going to pass out. What the hell is he doing?”

“I don’t know, David, maybe he was looking for a way to avoid his problems by completing a completely unnecessary task instead of just being an adult and talking about them.” She plucks a marker out of his hand and tosses it into the trash can with a clang.

“That one still worked, actually.” That gets her to laugh, and the sound works like a pressure valve, releasing the vice grip his chest has been in the twenty four hours. Until she stops laughing and just levels her brown eyes at him in a way that makes him feel uncomfortably seen.

“You need to talk to him. You’re going to regret it if you don’t.”

“Why doesn’t he have to talk to me?” The whine in his voice is grating, even to him, and he picks at a patch of dried paint on the table. 

“Because he has no idea what he did wrong. And to be honest, neither do I.”

David does an uncomfortable little wiggle as the silence stretches between them, like the words he wants to say are physically tumbling around inside him. After half a minute, he throws up his hands. “Fine! Fine. He. You guys had s’more night?”

“Of course.”

“And did that box of food seem especially, um, well curated?”

“Uh. I’m not sure how one ‘curates’ food, but. The pepperettes were a weird choice, although they did end up being really good. And I know you usually pack dark chocolate, and the marshmallows weren’t the camp brand…” Stevie trails off like she’s picking up bread crumbs on a trail she still can’t see. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“ _ Oh.”  _ The glare David gives her isn’t really an answer, but it must be enough of one, because Stevie snaps her mouth shut and there’s this weird mixture of sadness and pity that David’s never seen before on her face and never,  _ ever  _ wants to see again. 

“Whatever.”

“David.”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” he practically screams at her. He wraps his lips around his teeth and presses them together so hard it hurts, and he wants to take it back, but he doesn’t because it’s the first time in two days he felt like there was enough room in his chest to breathe.

She throws up her hands and stands up off the table. “Fine! You don’t need to talk to  _ me _ about whatever this is anyway.”

“Thanks so much!”

Stevie’s standing in the doorway, holding the screen open with her foot, her voice more patient and worried than David’s ever heard it. “You know, I don’t really like  _ people _ . But I like you. And I like him, and one of you needs to hear this: if you don’t talk to him, you’re not going to fix this. Summer will end and by next year? That’s a long time, David. Talk to him. Don’t spend the next year remembering being mad at each other. Dumbass.” She adds the last word seconds before the door snaps closed and she’s gone.

David finishes the bundle of markers in his hand and spends another fifteen minutes staring at his cuticles before he hauls himself out of the cabin and down the path towards the sports shed.

It’s so humid outside that the air feels like a physical weight he’s pushing through. He can hear Patrick before he can see him, the scraping, rattling, thumping sound of clearing out the shed.

When David finally crests the little hill that leads to the baseball field, he can just see Patrick’s shoulders disappear through the doorway. He slows his pace and comes up tentatively to the half-circle of baseball bases, bags of footballs, soccer balls, what looked to be some sort of rolled up net, and enough cobbled together field hockey equipment that the camp was able to outfit a team. Barely. There’s more stuff that even David doesn’t recognize, and he’s just trying to decide whether to wait for Patrick, or flee into the woods again, when Patrick comes back through the door and takes the choice off the table. 

“David.” Patrick says his name like it’s a complete sentence, a skill he’s always had but that’s never made David feel quite so uncomfortable before. He immediately wishes he were wearing a sweater so he had something to tuck his fingers into. He settles for crossing his arms and nodding his chin in Patrick’s direction.

“Hey.”

“What’re you doing here?” It’s a fair question, and he’s not angry, but. It’s not the way David wanted to start off this conversation, either. Then again, until about half an hour ago he didn’t want to be having this conversation to begin with. Only, that’s not entirely true. Because he doesn’t want to spend the next two weeks, and then a godforsaken ten  _ months _ , angry at Patrick. It’s been less than twenty-four hours and he already misses him. 

“Stevie told me you’d gotten some death wish and decided today was the day to clean out the shed.”

“Yeah, well. It needs doing.” He tosses a stack of plastic discs to the ground not far from David’s feet, and a little cloud of dust kicks up and over David’s ankles. David hops a little to the side and glares a Patrick, who just stares back and shrugs a shoulder, biting down on the inside of his cheek.

“Oh, so it’s going to be like that, then.”

“Like what?”

“Like….nothing.” 

“Nothing? Okay, David, well. If it’s nothing, I need to finish doing this. It hasn’t been done all summer.” But he’s not moving. He’s just standing there, arms crossed, staring at David, and it’s a cosmic joke of the universe that the scowl on his face makes him ten times more attractive to David. Who really, really doesn’t  _ want  _ to be attracted to Patrick right now, which only turns up the volume on his annoyance. 

“It’s because it doesn’t need to be done. It’s not like the sports balls have  _ boundaries  _ or, like, feelings about being all jumbled up together or whatever.”

“As opposed to the markers, which have a deep emotional investment in getting dried out?”

“That doesn’t — that is not even close to the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?” Patrick’s voice is almost as shrill as David’s, which is so outside the norm for him that it makes David’s stomach hurt. He doesn’t want to keep doing this, but every time he closes his eyes he sees that stupid bag of pepperettes and something twists in the back of his ribcage, just to the left. “You know what, this is stupid. I’m going to finish cleaning and I’ll just — I’ll see you tonight. Maybe. If you’ve decided you’re done being a dick.”

It’s the first time David can remember Patricking calling him a name with any kind of anger attached to it, and it shatters a tiny piece of his heart. Because Patrick’s not wrong, and he deserves it, but he never thought he’d put himself in a place where he deserves it from  _ Patrick.  _

"Oh  _ I'm _ the dick?!" David slides the bridge of his sunglasses down his nose.

"Are you being serious right now?"

"Does it look like I'm not?"

"I don't know what it looks like because I can't see your face behind those stupid sunglasses." It's a low blow – Patrick knows how David feels about his limited accessory options during the summer, how stifled it makes him feel. David waits until he goes back into the shed before he flips him off. Even with a burning, unfiltered anger pumping through his veins, he still can’t bring himself to do it to Patrick’s face. 

“Why are you even here? Did you walk all the way out here just to keep being an asshole?”

“No!” David shakes his head and tosses his hands. “I was worried about - the heat.” He swallows thickly before he says something he doesn’t want to say right now. “Just because I’m pissed at you doesn’t mean I want you dying.”

“Why, David?”

“Why don’t I want you dying? You know, right now I’m not sure.”

“No,  _ why are you pissed at me _ ?” 

David clenches his jaw and begins to pick at the underside of the cuff ring on his middle finger, worrying the rounded edge under his nail. “I talked to Stevie. Sounds like you guys had a blast on s’mores night.”

Patrick gapes at him. “Are you mad about  _ that _ ?”

And the dismissive way he says it might as well be a match to the powderkeg. David lips pull back from his teeth in a feral almost-grimace, like he’s just tasted something nasty. He sucks his teeth. “ _ Forgive me  _ for having a fondness for tradition, Patrick.” He clicks the “k” against his teeth like a gunshot.

“I don’t — David, you told me to go! I even reminded you how important it was?! And then you gave me that fake  _ Zoolander  _ cough and blew it off.”

“You didn’t  _ have  _ to go.”

“You  _ told  _ me to go.”

“You still didn’t have to.”

David thought he’d seen Patrick angry before, but the look on his face right now goes deeper than anger, into territories of hurt that rebound on David and make him feel like he’s been slapped. “So you were, what? Testing me? That’s a really shitty thing to do to someone. Especially your best friend.”

The knife twists and David thinks he might be about to cry, the way his eyes burn and he has a pressure building in the back of his throat. Because that’s not why, and he hates letting Patrick think that’s why, but it’s so much easier to let him believe that than it is to tell him the truth — that he threw a tantrum over the fact that he has feelings for Patrick, is deeply jealous of his girlfriend, and remains completely unable to do anything about either of those things. 

“I know. I’m — I made a mistake, Patrick.”

“It still doesn’t explain  _ why  _ you did it.” Patrick’s voice is soft, like he’s putting down his sword and preparing to draw a truce. “I don’t get it. We were sitting there, talking, you were literally packing the basket, and showed you the box from Rachel and…”

David doesn’t need to be looking at him to know the expression on Patrick’s face. He’s seen it before, when the mechanics of a new pitch fall into the muscles of his body, or his fingers recall the chord progressions on a new song. It’s the look of Patrick learning, of a puzzle piece falling into place, and it ripples across his face like water. 

Only this time the puzzle he’s putting together is David, and it’s a piece of a truth that David isn’t ready to pull out in the light of day. Because this situation is bad, but Patrick figuring out his secret would be much, much worse. So he admits a small truth to save himself from the larger one. 

“Do you know how long I spent working on that backpack? While you and Stevie were out doing, like, a million other things, I was  _ gathering snacks _ .” He hates how much it makes him sound like some kind of cartoon squirrel. Especially when, while he’d never admit it to Patrick and can barely even admit it to himself, it’s  _ so  _ not about the food. “Waiting for us to do this, like,  _ one  _ thing that we all get to do. And then —” 

“And then I wanted to take Rachel’s.” He doesn’t say it like a question, and David watches the shoulders of Patrick’s shadow slump. “David, I’m so sorry.”

David shrugs. “It’s whatever.” Patrick’s sigh is heavy and low, and David knows this is his last chance to meet him in the middle, or they’re going to be right back where they started. So, as much as it feels like the words are being pulled out of his throat, he says, “I mean, I forgive you. And I’m — I’m sorry. For being,” he waves a hand in front of himself as if to encompass all the things words fall short of. “You know.”

Patrick lets the words hang in the air before: “Did you just apologize? I think that might be the first time you’ve ever apologized to me.”

“It is not!”

“No, I think it might be. I’m gonna put it in my diary. Do you mind if I go grab Stevie and her camera? I want a picture of this moment.”

“You know what? I take it back,” but there’s a smile creeping across David’s face, slow and shy and unsteady, like in just a day he’s forgotten how to bend his face in all the shapes Patrick brings out best. Patrick’s chest shakes a little with a silent laugh, and he shakes his head, his own smile fading back into something more serious.

“I’m serious, though, David. That was a bad move on my part, but you — you can always talk to me, you know? I’d rather you just talk to me before you go full  _ Mariah Rose. _ ”

“I’m sorry, what now?”

“It’s what Stevie and I call you,” Patrick has the decency to let a little blush creep across his cheeks. “When you get...set off. It’s a mashup of—” 

“No, I got that,” he says with a roll of his eyes. He pulls his lower lips between his teeth for a second before he shrugs. “It’s perhaps not  _ completely  _ inaccurate.” 

That gets a laugh from Patrick, full and clear, and he sticks his hands in his pockets and looks at David fondly. “Are we good?”

“We’re good.” David feels an uncurling in his chest, the cool breeze after a break in the storm.

“Good.” Patrick looks like he’s about to say something else, but then his eye catches on one of the piles of sports gear and what comes out of his mouth is, “do you want to give me a hand?”

“Oh, absolutely not.” David cuts a wicked grin as he spins and begins to walk back the way he came, head higher and bounce in his step. 

“Come on!” Patrick yells at his back, smile in his voice. “At least save me a slice of the good cake tonight!”

And David does, because Patrick doesn’t finish until well after dinner, and David watches Patrick eat it by the dim light of the penlight, and David falls asleep for the first time that summer feeling like  _ correctness  _ has been restored, however fleetingly. 

*

David’s always somehow shocked when the time for the talent show actually rolls around, given how far away it seems at the start of summer, but this year the feeling of time has been so slippery and out of step he feels like he blinks and he’s there. Patrick is standing across the auditorium, singing fucking “Wonderwall” while never breaking eye contact. It’s so ridiculous, such an awful  _ cliche, _ that of course Patrick knows he hates it. Knows this is his worst nightmare, enduring other people’s reckless sincerity, knows so well, in fact, that Patrick actually laughs out loud for the second half of the song. By the time Patrick is next to him again, they’re both wiping tears from their eyes and David is laughing so hard that he has a stitch in his side. Late that night, as Patrick watches, he scribbles _motherfucking "Wonderwall"_ right under _“All Star.”_

“Hey, where’s—”

“No one needs to remember “Teenage Dirtbag”, Patrick,” he says admonishingly, which makes Patrick shake his head, roll his eyes, and smile at the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title taken from "Wonderwall," because what could be a worse teenage crush song?
> 
> She's still off living her fabulous life so won't see any of these for a while, but obligatory thank you to [helvetica_upstart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/) for this *entire* chapter, when the original plan was for this to be a two paragraph year. 
> 
> Come hang out with us on tumblr at [ships-to-sail](ships-to-sail.tumblr.com) and [storieswelove](storieswelove.tumblr.com)!


	4. Shed What Was Left of Our Summer Skin

**2007: Summer Before Grade 12**

Patrick comes back to camp the next summer single — _it just didn’t feel right_ , he says — and David feels a body-wide tension tension he didn’t realize he was holding fade away. 

Not that this makes a difference. Not that his tragically straight best friend will suddenly be into him. And it’s selfish, to be relieved that Patrick’s relationship with Rachel didn’t work out. David knows that. 

But Patrick has grown at least an inch since last summer, and the set of his shoulder is squarer and broader, and the line of his neck is deliciously sharp, and David can’t lick _any_ of it. 

So he indulges himself in the relief that it’s not because of Rachel. It’s just plain, old lack of interest in David. And _that_ he has a world of experience in how to handle. 

*

The worst part about camp — and that’s a tall order, because David likes to think everything about camp is the worst part— is the bugs. 

No one takes his fear seriously except Patrick. 

“Okay, David, the moth is safely in the cup. You can come out from under the covers now,” Patrick says over his shoulder, one morning in early July, after David’s guttural “FUCK!” brings him running into the cabin. He steps outside, lets the screen door close behind him, and releases the moth. 

“Thank you,” David calls weakly, his head emerging from under his black-and-white comforter, his hair still sleep-pressed to his head. 

“Anytime, David!” he calls back as he heads up the path for breakfast. 

*

David has gotten really good at candle making. He’s started experimenting with different color waxes, layering black and beige, molding patterns with his fingers while the wax is still hot, and carving them once they cool so the contrast shines through. 

Strangely, he loves watching his candles burn, seeing the art he’s proud of exist in a temporary space, and dripping away as they serve a purpose. It’s a soothing reminder of permanence. It reminds him of a documentary he once saw on Buddhist monks who make giant, intricate mandalas out of colored sand, only to destroy them when they’re finished. 

But mostly, it’s something he can be proud of. And that’s what he wants, to make things he’s proud of, and that serve a purpose. He just has no fucking idea _what_. 

*

Patrick plops down next to him in the mess hall on a Tuesday in early July and says, “so, any big birthday plans?” like some kind of weirdo, like they haven’t done the same thing for David’s birthday for three the last three years running. 

“Other than drinking whatever booze Stevie has stashed and making s’mores with you? No. Just the usual. Maybe I’ll shake it up, take some pills and cry myself to sleep.” He shimmies his shoulders for emphasis, smile not quite reaching his eyes. 

“Well, that sounds fun. But hey, before you commit to that pill plan, how about we have a picnic instead?” 

“Mmm, you don’t have to do that. We don’t have to do anything special just because I’m, like, turning eighteen.” 

“No, but I’d like to. Plus, my mom promised to send a fresh batch of her brownie butter tarts, and I know you’re not going to say no to those.” 

David tries his best to catch the smile blossoming over his face with a sharp twist of his mouth. “Okay, sounds good.” 

“Great. Dinner time?” 

David nods. 

* 

David and Stevie trek to the clearing after dropping the campers off at dinner. Patrick insisted on setting up alone, so they’re half an hour behind him. 

When they step into the clearing, it takes everything inside David not to audibly gasp. Patrick has laid out a blanket, and he has a lantern, but he’s also surrounded the entire area with what looks like twenty of David’s candles. 

David looks at Stevie in shock, who in turn looks back at David with a confused wrinkle between her eyes. 

“Hi,” David says as he steps up to the blanket, where Patrick is still turned around setting up the food. “What’s all of this?” 

“Well, it’s your birthday so I wanted to make sure—oh, Stevie! Hi. I, uh, I didn’t realize you were coming.” 

“Oh, was this not…?” Stevie asks tentatively. 

“No, no, the more the merrier. Sorry,” he says, gesturing at the blanket. “I only brought two sets of plates and forks, though.” 

“Oh, that’s fine. It’s meatloaf night anyway. I’m just going to go back to the mess hall.” 

“Nuh uh, no way,” David says, grabbing her by the wrist to stop her from leaving. “It’s my birthday. You can’t abandon me. It’s bad enough my parents forgot.” 

So they spend the night eating ham sandwiches, beef jerky, and ketchup chips, a random assortment of all of David’s foods. Patrick even produces a giant bottle of cheap red wine. Stevie gives him a look.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink red wine before.” Patrick shrugs a shoulder and focuses on pouring into their solo cups without spilling.

“Got kinda tired of white, thought I’d switch to red. More tannins.” Which makes David snort, because Patrick sounds like a forty year old man when he talks like that. Patrick gives him a knowing smirk. 

Luckily, not only does Patrick come through with the brownie butter tarts for dessert, but he also builds them a fire so they can roast marshmallows to put on top. They stay out till the candles have burned down to the end of their wicks and they will definitely be in trouble if they stay out any later. They stumble back, giggling and tipsy, through the dark, Patrick’s lantern leading the way, the light jerking every time David trips on the forest floor and spends a second too long pressed to the warmth of Patrick’s side. 

It is, hands down, the best birthday David has ever had. 

*

“Do you think you’re going to come back as a counselor next summer?” Patrick asks, just as David is threading a second marshmallow onto his stick. It’s the end of July, and they only have a few weeks left for s’mores nights. Stevie is on an overnight camping trip, so it’s just the two of them. David loves Stevie, but he lives for the too-infrequent adventures he gets to have alone with Patrick. He wants Patrick so badly that it’s a constant aching, clawing feeling in his chest; nights like these do what they can to ease the desperation. He wishes he could bottle up the calm for later.

Patrick is carefully unwrapping the chocolate — dark, because David has always insisted the balance is better, and who is Patrick to argue in the face of David’s chocolate opinions? — and unpacking the graham crackers, prepping them for the marshmallows. It’s a well rehearsed ritual, like dancing, only they’re both actually good at it. 

“Are you kidding me? I hope I never have to see this place again.” David’s own voice is bitter, a carefully constructed aloofness he’s been rehearsing for months. He doesn’t say the other half out loud: that reconciling this desperate desire to get out and _do_ something — anything — for himself, with the fact that he won’t spend his summers attached at the hip with his two best friends has been the most difficult thought experiment he’s ever undertaken. That if he thinks any harder about how he doesn’t know the next time he’ll see Patrick after the end of August, he starts to feel a little ill. So he’s just going to keep ignoring it. 

“Oh.” Patrick sounds sad, David thinks. It’s too much to focus on, Patrick’s soft ‘ _oh’_ putting David’s carefully constructed walls at risk of tumbling. They’re constantly at risk of falling during summers with Patrick, who lobs a half a dozen carelessly tossed kindnesses daily, each one looking for a crack in the construction. They haven’t found one yet, but that doesn’t mean David is ever safe. 

They sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes, methodically going through the motions of s’more construction, a perfectly timed choreography after years of practice. Making friends with Patrick all those years ago was a good decision, if only because of his ability and willingness to make a fire whenever David feels like some alone time and a snack. It’s the little things, when you’re trapped in the woods year after year, that make it tolerable. 

Patrick breaks the silence. “Can I tell you something?”

“Yeah, what’s up?” David takes a bite of his s’more while he waits for Patrick to speak again. It’s the same way he’s started a hundred other conversations, so David is expecting to hear that Patrick’s decided to switch majors for his first year, or that he’s going to try and talk Clint into letting him repaint the Toyota. 

“I...” Patrick lets out a strangled laugh, s’more left untouched on the graham cracker box beside him. “I think I might be gay.” 

A tiny whimper of shock slips out of David before he can stop it, the sound pushing its way through marshmallow and melted chocolate and pure, unbridled panic. _That_ had not been how he’d expected this — expected _any_ — conversation with Patrick to go. He swallows, clears his throat and tries again. “Okay…” David’s heart is pounding against his ribs so hard that he can’t hear the crickets anymore. “You think?” 

“Yeah. I mean. I’m pretty sure? Things were never...never _right_ with Rachel? And I could never figure out why. And lately…well, lately I’ve been thinking maybe it’s because Rachel is Rachel and not...?” He makes eye contact with David, and he looks nervous. Or maybe David is just projecting.

“A guy?” David manages. He takes another bite of his s’more, for want of something else to do with his hands. He’s afraid of what he might do if he leaves them unoccupied. Something in Patrick’s eyes shutters and he nods, slowly. 

David knows it’s his turn to say something comforting, or thoughtful, or encouraging, or to do literally anything other than pull Patrick close, mouthful of marshmallow be damned, and find out if _I think I might be gay_ and _I’ve been thinking about making out with you, David_ are synonymous. He settles for, “Well. Thank you for trusting me.” 

They’re both quiet after that, for long enough that David starts to make out the crickets chirping again. David watches Patrick, and Patrick watches the fire. 

“David, how did you know?”

David’s heart is pounding, and there go to the crickets again. “Kn-know what?” 

“That you, you know, liked guys _and_ girls?”

 _Oh_. 

David nods a little and stares into the fire. It’s easier to talk about this if he isn’t thinking about Patrick. He fiddles with his marshmallow stick, unable to keep his hands still while the sorts through the best way to say what he’s thinking. “I just sort of…knew? I never really questioned it.” Patrick makes a small, sad sound, and David rushes to fix the crack he’s widened. Shaking both hands frantically, he turns to Patrick and says, “But it doesn’t have to…not everyone…Patrick, It’s okay. You don’t have to have everything a hundred percent figured out all the time. I mean, look at me. I’m a walking disaster, but I’m still here.” He tries for a laugh, and it sounds almost natural. 

Maybe Patrick won’t even notice, won’t figure out how all of the carefully constructed lies David has told himself about his feelings for his best friend are all crumbling before his very eyes, lies that have held up through dozens of nights of note passing and school years apart and lackluster makeouts with other people

But David hadn’t accounted for this, never thought to plan for this, doesn’t have walls that stand a chance against _I think I might be gay_. 

The corners of Patricks mouth turn up a tiny bit, and it warms David from the inside, like the fire pressing warmth into his skin. David hurries to hold onto the feeling. “C’mere,” he says, wrapping both arms around Patrick’s shoulders, a little awkwardly from the side, but Patrick leans into David and buries his head in David’s neck.

What David feels — all that David feels — is secondary right now. He wants to give Patrick what he wishes he’d had when he was trying to come out: a safe person to trust, to spill his guts to, who would tell him that things would mostly, probably, be fine, and that if they weren’t, someone would at least be there with a hug and some roasted treats. 

They sit there like that, David rubbing soothing strokes up and down Patrick’s arm, until Patrick lets out a deep breath and pulls away, letting David’s arms fall off in the process. 

“Better?” asks David.

Patrick nods, scrubbing at his eyes like he’s tired. 

David needs to get out of here, and into the dark of the cabin where he can process and feel things and take his time slipping over the edge into panic. “It’s getting late. Let’s head back before they have to come looking for us again. I can’t deal with another lecture.” 

He stands and offers Patrick a hand to help him up, trying hard not to think about what would happen if he didn’t let go, if he wound his fingers together with Patrick’s and let their palms touch as an anchor in the dark. Instead, they walk, arms by their sides, in silence toward the cabin. They’re halfway there when Patrick stops abruptly. 

“David,” he says, sounding on the edge of panic. “What if I’m wrong? And I kiss a guy and I hate it and it just turns out…I don’t know, that this is always just going to feel wrong? That things with Rachel — that I couldn’t make it work because _I_ don’t work.” 

David has to turn and take a couple sets back to reach him. “Patrick, no.” David says, putting steadying hands on his shoulders. There’s just enough soft moonlight to see where their shadows bend and blend and become one shape as David looks seriously into Patrick’s eyes. “Whatever happens, you are _not_ broken. You do not need to have the answer tonight. It’s going to be okay.” 

“I know but…” Patrick’s eyes are the loudest David has ever seen them, pleading with him, David thinks, to understand a fear that runs this deep, a fear that you’re too different to love. David knows it way too well, and he’d do anything to keep Patrick from it. Including something hugely, recklessly stupid. 

Before David can stop himself, he reaches one hand up from Patrick’s shoulder and pulls him in for a kiss. It’s barely more than a peck, and still David pulls away feeling like he’s just run a marathon. Not that he’s ever run one — he’d rather walk into a butterfly exhibit than try — but he’s pretty sure this is what it would feel like. 

He cannot believe he just did that, and based on the look on Patrick’s face, he’s not the only one. 

“There,” he hears himself saying, voice shaking just a little. “Now you can figure it out without worrying.” 

He drops his hands and walks towards the cabin, doing an amazing job of not acting like he’s about to pass out, if he does say so himself. He lets the screen door swing shut on a stunned and silent Patrick. 

*

Neither boy speaks the rest of the night. They get ready for bed with everyone else, and at lights out, they still land head to head. 

David loses track time while he falls down a rabbit hole of guilt. _What the fuck had he been thinking?_ Patrick had poked his little head out of the closet for, like, _one_ second and David had somehow thought kissing him would be the Rosetta Stone for his sexual identity? He’s a menace unto himself, and he deserves whatever is coming for him. 

He loses track of time in his spiral, so it’s a shock when Patrick’s whisper comes suddenly out of the dark. David desperately wants to believe he doesn’t sound any different. “Goodnight, David.” 

He lets out a deep sigh. “Goodnight, Patrick.” 

David is so lost in his thoughts, he doesn’t realize Patrick’s breathing never evens out either. 

*

“Tell me again how you talked me into this?”

“Well, for starters — I didn’t. You came with me, remember?” 

“You said you were going to the course! I assumed you meant minigolf!”

Patrick gives him a look that screams _no way are you that clueless,_ and David just shrugs from where he’s crouched against the tree, his spine flush against the rough bark as he keeps breathing through his nose and reminding himself that no one has ever actually _died_ on one of these things.

“Well, you don't have to do this, David! You can just...wait at the van,” Patrick grunts and shifts his weight, sliding both of his feet another inch down the slack and towards the middle of the rope. Above him, the harness rattles where it’s clipped to the upper rope, and he hisses a little bit as he flexes his fingers. 

“But I paid!” And he had. They wouldn’t have let him into the park without it, and he wasn’t going to just and sweat his ass off in the van while he waited for everyone else to finish the ropes course. Of course, now that he paid, he didn’t really feel like he could just _skip_ it either. So he’d put on the harness, climbed the tree in a cold sweat, and then immediately frozen in place against the tree. 

Patrick was about halfway across and hadn't stopped talking to David since he slid his front foot onto the lower rope. David thinks there's a chance Patrick's a little nervous, but he's holding onto Patrick's voice like a lifeline so as long as he doesn't stop talking, David doesn't care.

"Why didn't you want to stay at camp today, anyway?" Patrick's voice cuts through the thick of his brooding thoughts again. 

"What do you mean?"

"Please, David. Even if you really did think it was minigolf, since when have you been a minigolf fanatic?"

"I…like minigolf," he trails off weakly. David has caught himself being a little reckless with his secrets since Patrick came out to him, and David’s entire world turned sideways. Like his brain has registered that there might be a chance, when David knows for a fact his pining is as hopeless as ever. He needs to be careful.

"Uh-huh. Okay," Patrick says, his focus on the last few steps between himself and the opposite platform. To cross the last bit of distance, he's got to do a sort of awkward crouch-lunge across the gap, and it pulled at the fabric of his gym shorts enough to press them flush to the back of his thighs. His calves are huge with the strain, and he grunts in a way that sends heat pooling in David’s lower belly. David is so busy thinking about the geometry of Patrick’s legs that it totally escapes him that, now that Patrick is done, it’s his turn. 

His head swims as he stands, bracing his back against the tree as he slides up the rough bark. And it’s a testament to just how bad his mind is racing right now that he’s not even slightly concerned about wrinkling — or god forbid, tearing — one of his favorite DVN shirts. He squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself to take long breaths through his nose and god damn it it’s one thing to change his bed for a guy and another thing to risk literal life and limb and how well does he even know Patrick Brewer and who decided it was a good idea for _human beings_ in their great evolutionary path _to go back to walking in the trees_ and— 

“ — any time now, David. Or I can just meet you back down on the ground? The ladder works both ways.”

The worst part is that Patrick isn’t mocking him. He would meet David back at the bottom of the ladder and probably not even make fun of him _that_ much on the ride home. Which is why David can’t go back down the ladder. Patrick’s voice works like a magnet on his feet, and one inch at a time he shuffles forward until he’s got his front foot on the taut rope, his hands above him grabbing onto the line in what’s got to be the least sexiest way he’s ever had his hands wrapped around rope before. He can’t open his eyes — won’t open his eyes, he’s not a moron and not insane, minus the part where he’s about to step onto a piece of fucking _twine_ and most likely plummet to his death — but he can feel Patrick’s gaze on him like a magnifying glass capturing the rays of the sun, hot and intense and focused. And he’s going to pass out if that keeps happening, and only like 70% from the heights.

“Talk to me, please,” is all he manages to grit out through closed teeth, his other foot joining the front one as he takes the world’s smallest shuffle-step forward. The ropes swinging underneath him and he yelps, his knuckles going white with the effort of his grip.

“Are you really not going to tell me why you’re doing this,” Patrick asks, his voice no further away than it had been, and David suppresses a whimper.

“I told you—” 

“ — if you lie to me right now, I will shake this rope so help me God.”

Patrick’s kidding, he’s kidding, he’s just trying to fuck with David, he would never actually do that, but then the rope gives a particularly violent bounce and his stomach falls out of his ass.

“Patrick Nicholas Brewer I will fucking push you out of this tree.”

“You have to get here first,” Patrick’s got laughter in his voice, and the rope above David sways this time. David growls, honestly growls, and takes another sliding step in Patrick’s direction. 

“Oh, I’ll get there,” his voice is so low he’s not sure Patrick can hear him, until Patrick laughs, a wild, feral sound that’s the first pleasant distraction David’s encountered since he started this whole stupid endeavor. 

“So, circling back to that reason…” He trails off and David squeaks and holds on out of a quickly-developed survival instinct. 

“Alexis, okay.”

“Your sister?”

“No, Bledel. I’m deeply upset about the final season of _Gilmore Girls_ ! _Of course_ , my sister!”

“What about her?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, can we skip the part where you say ‘nothing’ and then I say ‘nothing’ and then you pretend it really _is_ nothing until you finally decide to just tell me?” There’s a certain thrum of exhaustion under the words that make David think that Patrick really isn’t kidding. David takes a huge, shaky breath that accompanies another step, and he’s not sure how long he’s been up here but he’s not about to open his eyes and look down to find out. 

“She hasn’t written.” It’s easier to say with his eyes closed, when every part of his body but his mouth is focused on keeping him calm and steady long enough that he survives this stupid tree walk. “Like. At all. All summer. And it’s not like we’re—”

“ — close?”

“Yeah,” David says, laughing a little. “Exactly. But she usually writes at least once a summer, you know, if only to gloat about whatever jungle waterfall she just dove off of.”

“And nothing? I mean, there’s still time.”

David would shrug, if his arms weren’t above his head and the only things keeping him from plummeting to the ground. Another breath, another huge sliding step. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Well hey. This time, if you write her back, you can tell her —” David feels two strong hands wrap around the chest straps of his harness a second before gravity turns sideways, and his feet are behind him and his hands are still on the rope and _holy shit he’s going to fall_ — only he’s not.

His feet hit the solid surface of the platform and his eyes fly open. His face is only inches from Patrick, the force of Patrick’s pull sending them across the small platform and into the opposite tree. Patrick is grinning at him, cocked smile filling his face as his fists squeeze a little tighter around the black nylon caging David’s chest “ — that you actually survived your first ever tree walk,” he finishes.

“I did, huh?” David whispers to himself, partly because he’s still scared shitless after Patrick’s enthusiasm, and partly because he still can’t entirely believe that he did. He _did_ it.

And sure, it’s a shitty ropes course that he’s never doing again, and he still might throw up if he thinks too hard about it, but. David Rose hates heights, and David Rose just did a goddamn tree walk. It makes him wonder, for the briefest second, what else he’s put on his list of ‘never going to happen’ that might be there unfairly — Patrick has just huffed out a little laugh of agreement, and David realizes suddenly just how close their faces are, have been for several seconds.

Patrick’s breath ghosts across the arc of David’s bottom lip, following the curve with a precision David wants to chart on a graph. Patrick’s eyes are big enough to drown in, casks of amber that remind David of full liquor bottles and the sparks kicked off a fire like promethean glitter. David’s close enough that he can smell the mixture of sweat and juniper in the deodorant Patrick is wearing, and David’s mouth goes dry in a way that’s got nothing to do with the heat.

He licks his lips and watches Patrick’s eyes drop from his eyes to his mouth, back up to his eyes and down again, like he’s touching David without using his hands and David isn’t even sure Patrick knows he’s doing it. When Patrick meets his eyes a third time, he lets go of David’s harness to wrap him in a hug, his biceps bracketing David’s ears as he goes up on his toes.

“Congrats, dude,” and Patrick’s voice does the cutest little break on the word ‘dude’, it makes David consider walking between every tree in this whole damn park.

But the summer chooses that moment to punch him square in the chest, a tidal wave of frustration, and gratitude, adrenaline and regrets and anticipations that he already knows he’ll spend the next ten months unpacking. But if this is what he’s due — if this is all he’ll ever be able to look forward to — David leans into the platonic hug from his best friend after a major milestone and tells the lying, betraying voice in the back of his mind that it’s just going to have to be enough. 

*

“So,” David says, lying on his back on the edge of the tennis court, arm over his eyes to block out the sun. “What song are you gonna sing to torment me personally this year?” 

The annual talent show is a week away, and David is acutely aware that this is probably Patrick’s last chance to make David suffer while there’s nothing he can do but watch. Well, _suffer_ might not be the right word, anymore, but it does make David squirm with something nervous and sincere at just the thought of it. He tries to push the thought aside. 

Patrick is leaning against the tall chain link fence that exists for the sole purpose of not losing two hundred tennis balls per summer. Patrick huffs out what David is pretty sure is a nervous laugh. “Oh,” he says. “I don’t think I’m actually going to sing this year.” 

That makes David sit bolt upright. “ _What?_ Why the hell not?” He winces a little when he hears what he’s said, because even though they’ve never talked about it, they both know that Patrick has sang directly at David every single summer since they started. And that only works if David pretends not to want it, not to love it. _Especially_ now, especially after Patrick is out, after he’d done something as dangerous as kissing Patrick, after David has, against his better judgement, stopped pretending not to want Patrick so goddamn much. David needs to get used to this new dynamic, get used to what he can and can’t say to Patrick anymore. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Patrick says, dragging a small twig back and forth across the grey-blue concrete of the court, staring at his hands and not David. “I tried a few songs but nothing felt _right_ , you know?” 

David scoffs a little. “Patrick, two years ago you sang “Teenage Dirtbag.” What exactly doesn’t feel _right_? What, are you having too much trouble picking between “Mmmbop” and “The Final Countdown? Because Alexis dated all three of the Hanson brothers last summer so like, if you’re really trying to annoy me, that should tip you off.” 

“David, I’m not—” Patrick stops talking abruptly and looks up at David. It’s that intense, heated eye contact that seems to just come naturally to Patrick. It makes David feel like Patrick can see straight through him, but for some reason keeps looking anyway. It’s as unnerving as it is disarming, and all David can think about is how close their faces were on the treewalk Patrick keeps opening and closing his mouth like he’s going to say something, and it feels important. David waits. “Never mind. I’m just not doing it. Can we drop it?” 

“Oh, okay.” 

“It’s just—” 

“Patrick, it’s fine. If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to talk about it.”

“I know you think I only do it to punk you, but. I’m just not up for making a game out of it this year, you know?”

David doesn’t know, and doesn’t know what to say, so he just lets the words hang in the air and rolls onto his stomach, pillowing his arms beneath his head and concentrating on the heat of the sun pressing between his shoulder blades. In the safety of the darkness between his arms, he runs Patrick’s words through his fingers, over and over again, and tries to figure out what they mean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I thanking [helvetica_upstart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/) every single chapter? You'd better believe it. 
> 
> Come hang out with us on tumblr at [ships-to-sail](ships-to-sail.tumblr.com) and [storieswelove](storieswelove.tumblr.com)!


	5. Both a Beginning And an End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a continuation of the summer in chapter four!

**2007: Summer Before Grade 12, continued**

If there’s one tradition David hates more than literally all of the others, it’s the end of year capture the flag tournament. It’s an all-day affair that involves traipsing through the woods, getting sunburnt and bug bit, and pretending to give a shit about looking for the other team’s little colored pennant, hidden somewhere in the trees. He manages to spend several years begging off with a stomach ache, or a headache, or imagined heatstroke. He gets a few more summers out of volunteering to help the kitchen staff, or the nurse, or the janitorial staff — although he spends that summer hiding in the supply closet, sweating his ass off but at least getting to flip through old issues of Vogue while he does it.

But it’s his last year, and his well of excuses has finally run dry. Which is why he’s awoken at seven in the morning with everyone else, slipping on the same blue t-shirt as the rest of his cabin and trying not to notice how much the color brings out the auburn in the tips of Patrick’s curls. Patrick’s hair has gotten longer over the summer, the longest David’s ever seen it, and he’s only told Patrick about a dozen times he should leave it long when he goes to school in the fall.

“Aren’t there, like, laws against making children get up this early?” David snipes at Patrick when the other boy tugs on his leg, letting his fingers drag down from mid-calf to ankle, pulling him towards the door for breakfast before the games begin. David suppresses a whine at the loss of contact and slides off the bed, his body limp, his Uggs making a soft  _ thump _ on the warped wooden floor. He sits on the end of Ted’s bed and changes into his high tops. 

“So when you have to do something you don’t want, we’re children, but when Stevie is sneaking in grain alcohol, we’re ‘practically adults?’ And it’s seven-thirty, David. Same time the morning bell has  _ always  _ been.” 

Patrick waits for David to finish getting ready, and pushes him out the door, hand splayed across David’s lower back.  _ That _ wakes him up more than coffee ever could. 

They book it up the trail for breakfast, and they’re in line for food before either of them speaks again. 

“I just don’t understand why this is mandatory participation. When have I  _ ever _ suggested I would enjoy Capture the Flag?”

“Come on, David, it’s going to be fun!”

“Oh, is fun what we’re calling it now?”

“Well, what would you call it?”

“A horde of hormonal teens let loose into the woods, tasked with claiming victory over one another by procuring a lost symbolic artifact? I’d call it the prequel to a horror movie no one is paying eighteen dollars to see.”

Patrick keeps his eyes trained on the eggs he’s serving himself, and his voice is low when he speaks. "Oh, I don't know about that, David. A bunch of hormonal teens let loose without chaperones, drenched in sweat and a million places to hide? Doesn’t sound so bad to me.” David almost chokes on his own tongue. “Plus,” Patrick continues, swinging around in line to look at David, voice back at a normal volume. “People pay to see those awful mutant crow movies, so. Don't sell your ideas short."

"What ideas?" Stevie slides into line behind them, grabbing a tray.

"David thinks today's capture the flag game is the stuff of horror cinema," Patrick says casually, as if that had truly been the extent of their conversation, while he grabs yogurt, fruit, and bacon for himself and a giant scoop of home potatoes and a chocolate muffin for David, who has both hands already wrapped around a cup of coffee. Patrick sees David eyeing the bacon plate and picks up a few extra pieces with a fond eye roll.

"No, David. To be a horror movie there'd need to be, like, wanton drug abuse and promiscuity. Without that, no slaughter ever reigns down on the adorable, unsuspecting sleepaway camp in the woods."

They all pull out chairs at the same round table in the corner that's become theirs over the years. David plucks a piece of bacon from the plate and chews it, looking at Stevie contemplatively. "You know, I don't think you meant it to, but that makes me feel a little better."

"Really?!" Patrick and Stevie both say at the same time, sharing a smile 

"No," David immediately admits. 

Stevie snorts and gets up to refill their coffee mugs. 

“You know, while the recreational drug use is far more you two’s territory,” Patrick leans towards David as soon as Stevie is out of earshot, his voice dropping. “That does give me an idea.”

“What kind of idea,” David asks warily.

“Well,” Patrick coughs and looks back and forth between David and the tablecloth, where he can’t stop picking at a small-but-growing hole. “What’s the one other thing summer camp slasher flicks  _ always  _ have?”

David and just stares at him in slowly dawning horror

“No,” David says.

“Come on,” Patrick pokes him in the soft flesh just above his knee and David has to bite back a screech, he’s so ticklish. “It’ll be fun.”

“That place isn’t fun. It’s hot.”

“It’s hot  _ everywhere.  _ It’s August...It’ll be away from the game. We can hide out there all day and you can tell me all about the challenges from that clothes show you can’t shut up about.”

“If I talk about it so much how do you not know the name yet?”

“Fine, David. You can tell me all about judging biases between commercial and high fashion judges on  _ Project Runway.  _ How’s that sound?”

David chews on the inside of his cheek and twirls one of the rings around his finger. 

“Why do you look like you have to take a shit?” Stevie asks, sliding a full cup of coffee back in front of him and following it up with half a bagel. 

“Patrick’s trying to get me to go to the graveyard,” David says, taking a giant bite of bagel as Stevie’s eyebrows fly to her hairline and Patrick blushes and scowls at David.

“So we’re playing hookie today? Count me in?” Stevie pats Patrick on the shoulder, her eyes wide and her smile feral. 

*

The joint, when David finds it, is covered in a thin layer of dust that's almost impossible to remove without crumbling the brittle paper. This leads to a heated five minutes, tucked under the bleachers at the activity’s field, arguing about whether it's still worth smoking while the counselors run the rest of the campers through the day ahead: two teams, two flags posted to trees deep in the woods, all bets off as long as it doesn't lead to blood or exposed bone. It's camp-sanctioned  _ Lord of the Flies,  _ and David wants to be as far away from as much of it as he can, as quickly as he can.

Jake blows the airhorn, his dark hair smoothed back from his face and five o’clock shadow alive and well at 9:00am, and while every other camper takes off running to the woods, their little trio hangs back. Patrick leans over to re-tie his already tied tennis shoe, and David readjusts the way his plaid culottes are sitting on his hips. Stevie is trying to unwrinkle the joint, to no avail, and as soon as the first wave of campers hits the trees, she judges it safe enough and pulls a little black Bic out of her jeans pocket. She falls in line behind David, who falls behind Patrick, who shrugs a backpack onto his shoulders, ever prepared.

The graveyard isn’t  _ really  _ a graveyard, in that there are no bodies buried there. No one’s entirely sure what it is — it was there when the Rose’s bought the camp, although they didn’t know of its existence until years later. There aren’t any records in the massive amount of paperwork, and theories have ranged from ‘abandoned building foundation’ to ‘fairy ring’ to ‘Blair Witch’. Whatever it was, the collection of limestone rocks that stuck out of the ground at semi-random intervals looked enough like headstones that the nickname stuck. Then again, the giant weeping willow and shallow pond on the edge of the clearing didn’t do much to dispel the creepy vibe of the place.

If David was being honest, he thought the graveyard was beautiful. It’s a quiet, scraggly little place that most people never come to — the campers because they’re not  _ technically  _ allowed, and the counselors because who in their right minds wants to hang out in the sweltering summer heat when they have an air conditioned rec room all their own? 

So David uses it as a haven, but only in times of extreme duress. Like trying to avoid a camp-wide competitive event at all conceivable cost. The graveyard is tucked into a little pocket of woods behind the baseball diamond, a twenty-minute hike through brush that’s thick enough it’s just one more reason not to bother. As the wave of campers surges to the right and into the stretch of woods hiding the flag for capture, the three of them duck to the left and towards the thick copse of trees. 

The joint is basically gone by the time they hit the tree line, the dry paper burns so quickly. The bud is old, and harsh, and the three of them have trouble staying on their feet as the coughs rip through their lungs. But the coughs transform to laughs, as they always do, and Patrick slows his pace by half a step to pull a thick metal water bottle from the backpack. He hands it to David, and the water is blissfully cold as it pours past his lips and down his throat. Patrick’s just staring at him, watching his throat, and David wonders if he missed a spot shaving. 

He runs a hand over his chin and hands the bottle to Stevie, who doesn’t manage to drink any without spilling it all down the front of her capture the flag shirt. She peels it off and immediately bunches it up and loops it around her neck like a scarf. Her grey tank top is damp from the spill, just above her belly button, but her arms look great. Which David would tell her, maybe, if they were normal best friends. But instead, he just laughs and rolls his eyes and takes the water bottle back before she spills the rest of it. 

Patrick falls into step with David as Stevie walks a couple paces ahead, and David is acutely aware that Patrick is walking closer than usual. He keeps finding things to show David, a feather caught in a clump of groundcover, a little bundle of morning glories tucked behind a fallen tree branch, the round, brush-covered hollow that was probably formerly a fox den. Every time he slows to show them something, Stevie keeps walking, until they’re far enough back that she huffs in frustration and glares at them, hands on her hips, until they catch up. 

“Did it ever occur to you maybe I want to see cool nature shit,” she stage whispers at Patrick, with a smirk on her face, after the third time it happens, and he shrugs. David is panting a half-step behind him, the heat and the humidity combining to press all the air out of his chest. 

“Honestly, not really,” and there’s a breezy flippancy that makes David snort, affection blooming in his chest. They’re stopped right next to each other, so Patrick reaches his left arm across his body to grab the water bottle from David, and his thumb brushes over David’s hand. It’s the second time today that Patrick has touched him in a slow, purposeful way, and it sends goosebumps across David’s entire body. He tries not to let his mind wander, because there’s every chance that he’s just projecting, reading deliberateness into casual touches. But Patrick has pushed up the sleeves on his t-shirt, and his bare bicep keeps bumping David’s exposed skin, tacky with sweat, and Patrick’s comment about “sweaty teenagers with places to hide” flashes through David’s mind with alarming force. 

“So Stevie, what were your plans for this afternoon?” Patrick asks lightly, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. David barks a little laugh and answers before Stevie had the chance to.

“She’s literally hiking with us, Patrick, what are you talking about?”

“No, I know, it’s just, you know, the day is long.”

“How long can it be?”

“Long enough that Stevie could do something else….after, if she wanted, David.” Patrick waves a hand through the air indignantly.

“After what, Patrick?” Stevie’s got enough sugar in her voice to put him in a diabetic coma, and it’s so unlike the way she usually talks to him it makes the hair on the back of David’s neck stand up. But she’s got that look on her face that she usually directs at David, the one that says  _ I know you’re full of shit and I’m not going to let you get away with it _ , and David has no idea what Patrick has done to deserve it. 

“After...the hike,” he finishes lamely. “You know what, forget I asked. In fact, let’s just —” 

“Just what, Patrick? I’m starting to feel like you don’t want me to come.”

“Of course he wants you to come!”

“Of course I want you to come,” Patrick repeats, his gaze level and his voice monotone as he looks at Stevie. She raises a single eyebrow at him and he glares at her. 

Stevie just rolls her eyes and flips him the bird with another smirk. David feels like he’s watching ducks on the water, and whatever is going on in the current underneath his is something he wants no part of. 

They spend the walk playing one of their favorite games: Would You Rather. They take turns, in the same order they always have, and manage to cycle through a few new options before falling back on old favorites, well-worn debates that pass the time and almost distract David from the sweat dripping down his lower back and making his carefully styled hair spring into its God-given curly state. 

“Okay, but, counterpoint,” David says forcefully, a single finger rising into the air like either of them are actually looking at him. “ _ Anywhere in the world _ ,” he repeats the option, like Patrick hadn’t just posed the question. 

“That’s not actually a point,” Stevie says from behind him, sing-songy and swinging her arms so that they bat gently against the trees next to her. If she’s not careful, she’s going to get poison oak again, although from what David can see, these trees seem to be vine-free. Some things he’s learned from pure necessity. 

“No, but. Think about it. You could go anywhere in the world, instantly, and then back. Talk about the ultimate breather. A complete reset.” The longing in his voice when he says it pinches at all of them a little bit, turns the energy between them into a bittersweet, anxious little thing. The walk like that for a little bit, the sounds of the woods slowly filling the space until Patrick clears his throat and says, as good humoredly as ever:

“I don’t know, David. I still think I’d rather be able to read people’s minds.” He’s looking at David as they walk, which seems dangerous to David but Patrick’s step doesn’t falter. David can feel Patrick’s gaze on his face, and it makes David feel like maybe Patrick  _ can _ read his mind, can see all the desperate, sad, filthy, romantic things he’s dreamed about doing and ended up woefully short of ever following through on. The thought flushes David’s cheek, and he wipes a hand across the sweat on his forehead just to have something to do with the nervous energy running through his body. 

“Are there controls?” Stevie asks.

“Dealer’s choice, I guess?” Patrick answers.

“Then yeah, I wanna read minds. But only when I want to. None of that unstoppable mind-reading stuff where you can’t keep the thoughts out.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s definitely the way it’s got to work,” Patrick agrees.

David makes a little scoffing sound. “Please, Patrick. You could ask anyone anything and they’d tell you. You’ve got that Secret Keeping face.”

Patrick stops and spins, head cocked to the side and lips pursed. It happens so fast that Stevie runs into him and goes crashing to her ass with a laugh. “What exactly is a Secret Keeping face?”

“That,” David says, motioning at Patrick’s...everything. Everything about him screamed safety and trustworthiness and ‘tell me everything.’ Which is exactly what made him so fucking dangerous to David. 

“Well, I can assure you, David, not everyone tells me everything.” And he stoops to help Stevie up, who is just sitting and watching them, so David thinks maybe he imagined it, the  _ look _ that passes across Patrick’s face, the look that David can’t quite figure out, that pulls at a hook behind his knees and makes him want another drink of water. Stevie mutters an, “oh my god” as she slips her hand into Patrick’s heaving herself to her feet. 

It’s such shitty weed, he’s basically sober again by the time they reach the graveyard, and he’s thrilled to sink to the ground in the shade of the giant weeping willow, all three of them slipping under its branches and giggling. There’s something about the drape of the trees that always reminds them of fairy tales, secret doors in between the worlds that lead to promise and adventure.

Patrick tosses his backpack down and rolls his shoulders, and David forces himself to look away from the shift of muscle underneath a polycotton blend. David distracts himself by opening the backpack and grabbing the first bag of snacks he sees, a combination of dried fruit and almonds that’s practical, and healthy, and adorably boring. 

“Ooh, gimme,” Stevie says, plopping down next to David and leaning back against the roots of the tree. She balls up her shirt and sticks it behind her head. David passes her the bag and zips the backpack up. 

“Easy, you two. I really don’t feel like trekking back through all of that for lunch.” He throws a thumb over his shoulder towards the trees they’d just exited, and David feels the truth of that statement seeping into his bones. Still.

“It’s just  _ one _ bag,” David says, biting into a dried apricot with all his teeth and making eye contact with Patrick. Patrick’s eyes flick down to David’s mouth as he rips off a piece of the fruit, and David wonders for the second time if he missed a spot shaving. He swallows hard. 

“Yeah,” Stevie says from behind him, her focus on picking out just the raisins. “Don’t be greedy, Patrick.”

“Okay, well. Just remember that when we’re ready to hike back and you’re starving.”

“Wait, you only  _ brought  _ one bag?”

Patrick just quirks and eyebrow and shrugs. “Go easy on the munchies and you won’t have to find out.”

David groans and sticks Patrick’s backpack behind his head, laying on it like a pillow and looking up the trunk of the willow tree. After a few minutes, David feels Patrick lay down on his other side, close enough that the line of his body is pressed up against David. Patrick folds one arm behind his head as he settles onto it like a pillow. Patrick stretches out his legs, the denim dark blue against the golden burnish of Patrick’s late-summer barely-there-tan, his exposed calves catching the light as drop of sweat rolls down the divot in his calf. The shorts end just below the jut of his hip bones, and the only thing above that is an expanse of chest and wiry, muscled arms that bend as Patrick cups the back of his neck. David tries to swallow, but his tongue feels too big for his mouth, and he feels like if he spends any more energy very pointedly  _ not  _ looking at Patrick, he’s going to blow an aneurysm. Patrick looks  _ indecent _ and David can’t do a damn thing about it. 

All three of them are looking up at the mid-morning sun, dancing over the branches and through the leaves, the gentle murmur of the thin limbs slowly lulling them into a place that’s not sleeping, but isn’t awake either. Patrick starts to hum, and then Stevie joins him, and it’s not a song that David recognizes, which isn’t really surprising, but it’s nice. And David doesn’t really believe in perfect moments, but if he did, this would be one of them — his sun warm to the touch, his muscles heavy with exertion, the feeling of Patrick’s skin, pressing against his in an infinite number of points, the little waft of Stevie’s conditioner on the breeze reminding him of someplace tropical. 

Which, of course, is why part of him isn’t surprised when, still half caught in the haze of their little bubble, Jake comes crashing to the clearing. He’s got his camp t-shirt on, all the counselors do, but he’s slashed a v-neck into his, so that the tan, flat expanse of his chest is visible. He’s got a single shark-tooth on a lanyard around his neck, and it lies in the V of the shirt in a way that David once found deeply alluring and now thinks looks...okay, still deeply alluring, but only in a hot way. His hand rakes through his hair, a look of not nearly enough surprise on his face.

“Oh, hey guys.” He smirks, and manages to find the perfect tree to lean against, his smile languid and filthy as it fills his face and his eyes find David’s. And then Stevie’s. And then Patrick’s, and David feels a clawing at the back of his throat that forces out a dry cough as he says:

“Oh, my God.”

*

“Didn’t expect you all to be...out here.” Jake’s voice dips as Patrick sits up, hand pressed to his brow to try and block some of the sun. Stevie’s up on one elbow, and David can see from where he’s sitting that she’s looking at Jake with the same kind of heat that has dropped Jake’s voice half an octave.

“What are you doing out here?” David asks, honestly confused.

“Some of the first years got lost and went wandering. They made it halfway here before giving up and shooting off a distress call to the front office.”

“Aw, poor guys,” Patrick says from where he’s sitting. Jake’s eyes flick to Patrick, and he nods appreciatively. Because of course he does. He’s Jake.

“Yeah, yeah. They just wanted me to do a full sweep in case anyone else needs the help but hasn’t called in yet.”

“Well, we certainly don’t need the help, do we?” David says, looking between the other two for support. Patrick shakes his head ‘no’ earnestly, but Stevie is just staring at Jake’s mouth. She still hasn’t put her capture the flag shirt back on, and David is a mature enough adult to acknowledge that, if he were back in Jake’s shoes — yeah, he kind of gets it. For both of them.

“Now that I’ve found you guys, actually, I could use a hand?”

“Oh?” Stevie asks, sitting up the rest of the way.

“Yeah, I need help finding my — whistle. My emergency whistle.” Jake’s making words, but they don’t make any sense, but before David can point that out, he sees Jake and Stevie exchange a look and he presses his lips into a straight line.

“Absolutely,” Stevie nods seriously. “You can’t  _ not  _ have your emergency whistle.” She stands and David watches Jake paint her with a long, slow look.

“Awesome,” Jake says. He holds out a hand, and Stevie walks right past David to take it. He reaches out and wraps a hand around her bicep, pulling her back and holding up a finger to Jake.

“Just one sec!” He pulls Stevie close and turns his back on Jake. “You do know he’s a counselor this year, right? He’s not technically, like,  _ with us _ anymore?”

“He’s 19. I’m 18. At least he’s got a job.” Stevie says, and she has a point.

“And you do know the counselors don’t have, and have never worn, emergency whistles.”

“Then I guess we’ll be looking for his for a  _ really _ long time then, won’t we?” she deadpans, her gaze level and meeting David’s confidently. His eyebrows lift into his hairline but she just returns the expression. David feels something prickle in the back of his brain, a little tickle that pushes out the next sentence: “What about Twyla?”

Stevie looks at the ground, which she only ever does when she knows she won’t be able to snark back at him and she’d rather be illusive than vulnerable. “Don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Stevie—” 

“You and Patrick have fun!” she says loudly, so loudly that Patrick hears her, and David sucks air through his teeth and feels his cheeks turn red.

“I know where you sleep,” he mutters under his breath, and she just winks at him.

“His bunk is closer,” she says back just as low.

“Want us to save you a seat for the fireworks, Stevie?” Patrick asks from where he’s still lounging on the ground, his eyes flitting back and forth between Stevie and David, concern pulling his features towards the center of his face. 

“Nah, I wouldn’t count on it,” she says over David’s shoulders.

David’s pulse is racing and he’s shifting from foot to foot — he hasn’t been alone with Patrick for weeks. Not like this, not since he kissed Patrick, and it’s making him feel clammy and a little nauseous to think of what he might try if left to his own devices. Patrick has already had to deal with David’s reckless behavior once, and David isn’t sure their friendship will survive a second time. Couple that with the fact that David’s watching Stevie making a wreckless choice on some Twyla rebound, and all of his frantic energy cascades out of his mouth in the form of some truly deranged, “We’ll help you look! For Jake’s whistle.” He chokes on the word ‘whistle’ and everyone around him speaks at the same time.

“What?!”

“No, David.”

“That’s cool, dude, the more help the merrier.”

Stevie is glaring at him like she might actually murder him in broad daylight and Patrick is on his feet, hands in his pockets.

“You really don't need to do that,” Stevie says through clenched teeth.

“Besides, more looking means more walking, more digging into piles of plants that might be poisonous, or ugly, or smell bad,” Patrick rattles through most of David’s major plant-based complaints quickly, sounding a little frantic himself.

“Exactly,” Stevie says. “Wouldn’t you rather just, you know. Stay here. With Patrick.” Her voice is loaded, and David knows exactly what she’s doing. Tell him to take a chance, to do something a little trashy and a little reckless to, to not get so goddamn caught up in the potential consequences and live his fucking life. That last one is more in David’s voice than Stevie’s, but it shuts David up with a bolt, his jaw clicking shut.

“Besides, I’ve got the snacks,” Patrick sing-songs from behind him, and that makes it easy. Easy for David to shrug his shoulders, and smile a tight-lipped smile, and wave Stevie off to go help Jake ‘find his whistle’. Because if there’s one thing David’s never been able to say no to, it’s food. Right?

*

“I cannot believe she just  _ went with him _ like that!” David takes another bite of dried pineapple, tucking the sweet piece of fruit into his cheek so he can repeat himself for the dozenth time in as many minutes.

“I cannot believe we’re still talking about this, David.” Patrick is laying on his back, his feet and calves dangling in the dark water of the pond, his eyes closed and his voice surprisingly placid, for as much as David’s been spinning out since Stevie.

The minute Stevie had stepped out of sight, David spun on his heel and dropped his jaw, gesturing behind him. “Can you believe that?”

Patrick shrugs, his hands still in his pockets, and he’s opening his mouth to respond when David cuts him off. “You know, if you wanted to implement, like Phase Two of your ‘Do I Like To Kiss Guys’ experiment, I’m sure Jake would be more than willing to help.”

“Oh. Uh,” Patrick looks caught off guard. “I don’t think I’m going to need a phase two.” Well, that answers a question David didn’t know he still had. He ignores the slowly deepening pain that’s blooming inside him and watchesPatrick’s third favorite smile creep onto his face, tiny and fond and living more in the dimples than in the lips themselves. 

“What?”

“Nothing! Just…I’m happy for her!”

“For Stevie. And Jake.”

“I’m happy she’s having fun,” Patrick amends as David pushes past him to the backpack, grabbing up the bag of trailmix and stuffing a handful in his mouth, despondent. 

“I’m fun!”

“Oh, I know you are.” Patrick’s voice is slippery, and low, dancing along the line between teasing and truth in a way that twists David’s stomach.

“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic,” he says, sitting down on the edge of the pond and folding his legs underneath him. He leans back on his hands and stares at the sky, his eyes squinted and his mouth puckered.

“Now, David, would I do that to you?” Patrick sits quickly enough that he ends up off balance, crashing into David’s shoulder at the same time that his palm swats at David’s thigh, heavy and calloused and friendly. David wants that hand on his thigh, on his back, on the side of his face and across the front of his throat when he swallows. He takes another handful of fruit to keep himself from drooling and scoffs.

“Yes,” he mumbles through a mouthful, and Patrick giggles and lays back with a little shrug of his shoulders. David tries to slip back into the easy, suspended animation of the easy affection of a few hours ago, but he can’t. He can’t stop thinking about the way Jake’s hand curled around Stevie’s, how it had felt to let Jake’s hand curl around his like that once, how badly David wanted to see what that would feel like with Patrick, instead.

“I just. I cannot —” 

“ — believe her, yeah. I got that, David.” Patrick’s still got his eyes closed, his voice dreamy and soft, but there’s a heaviness to the way his breath falls, like a silent sigh only David can hear. “Are you  _ sure  _ you don’t want to just go back?”

“Ugh,” David groans. “What’s the point, Stevie isn’t going to be there, she’s going to be off sucking face in the woods like some cliche poster child for teenage sexual deviancy. So trashy.” He means it as a joke, because it’s exactly the kind of joke he and Stevie would make about each other. But the second the words are out of his mouth, Patrick winces and David would give anything to shove the words back down. 

“Wow. That seems...a little harsh, David.”

“I mean!” He says defensively, waving his hand through the air even though Patrick is still not looking at him. “It’s true!”

Patrick sighs heavily and drags a hand across his eyes. “Noted, David.” He sits up and runs a hand through his curls, pulling at them slightly as he stares at something in the middle distance. David clears his throat, and Patrick finally looks at his face. “I’m going to go.”

David blanches. “Go? Go where?”

“Back to camp.” Patrick heaves himself to his feet, grabbing onto a low-hanging branch above him for a bit of leverage. And, because the forces of the universe work in ways David will never understand, the branch breaks and sends Patrick stumbling backwards and into the pond, where he lands ass-first before slamming onto his back and disappearing under the water. He doesn’t exactly land ‘off-shore’ and the pond isn’t deep, but when he comes back up he’s sputtering and rubbing water out of his eyes and yelping a loud, “shit!”

David takes a step towards the edge of the water, his eyes wide and a laugh trapped in his throat. He makes a sort of choked noise at the same moment that his hand extends. And maybe it’s because it’s Patrick, so his guard is down, or because he’s so taken with the sudden appearance of a  _ wet Patrick _ , but David doesn’t register what’s about to happen before it’s too late. Like a flipbook, he watches Patrick’s hand wrap around his, his fingers tight on the back of David’s hand, and instead of his weight shifting towards David and dry land, David is being pulled out into the water. 

He crashes chest-first into Patrick, and years of summers with Alexis have burned the next series of moves into his muscles: one hand wraps into Patrick’s hair while the other pushes down on the top of his shoulder, driving his upper body into the deeper water at the same time David’s head breaks the surface and he takes a huge gasp of air. 

He manages to stay there for all of two seconds, floating with his weight balanced on Patrick as a tipping point, a triumphant little laugh punching out of his lungs, before Patrick’s flailing beneath the water starts to knock him off balance. 

What his summers with Alexis  _ didn’t  _ prepare him for, however, is the strong grip of blunt fingers around his waist, the compact force of someone as strong —  _ stronger  _ — than he is, pushing back, lifting him away and forcing him backwards until his feet hit the silty bottom. David’s hands hands let go of Patrick, who pops above the water, panting. 

Patrick is treading water for longer than he needs to before he pushes himself towards David, standing mere inches in front of him. His chest is heaving, and his eyes are red, and it slaps David across the face, that he might have kept Patrick underwater for too long as Patrick manhandled David out of his space. David’s stomach drops and he feels like he can’t get the words out fast enough. 

“Oh my God, Patrick, I am so sorry, I could’ve — I didn’t mean to, like, half drown you—” David stutters to a stop because Patrick is giving him this  _ look,  _ this look that David has never seen before, and he thought he knew all of Patrick’s faces. David is afraid Patrick is about to take a swing at him, face red and his eyes focused so intently on David that he feels like he’s about to combust. He tries to take a step back, but his weight slips on the slick bottom of the pond and Patrick reaches out to steady him by the front of his shirt and  _ oh.  _

Patrick doesn’t want to hit him. 

Patrick wants to lick into his mouth, apparently, dragging David toward him by the cheap blue shirt and pushing their faces together hard enough that David can feel the press of teeth beneath the pillow of Patrick’s lips, the hard edge of need as he pulls David to him, reaching down to wrap a broad palm around each thigh underwater and  _ lifts _ , bringing David’s legs up and around his hips, walking them both a little deeper into the water, and it’s all David can do to wrap his arms around Patrick’s shoulders to hang on. 

David squeezes his thighs into the soft meat of Patrick’s flank, and Patrick starts a little, hands digging into the soft swell right where thigh meets the curve of David’s ass. David moans into Patrick’s mouth, and Patrick swallows the sound, pressing up and into David so that David has to wrap his arms around tighter to stay upright. He boxes Patrick in, pulling on the soft strands of curls enough to tilt Patrick’s head sharply to the left, David claiming his mouth in a mess of tongue and teeth before dropping to Patrick’s jaw, the pale stretch of skin beneath his ear where he’s got a little bundle of freckles that are almost impossible to see if you don’t already know they’re there. David worries his teeth against that spot, laves it with his tongue, smiles into the panting, heaving movement of Patrick’s chest and the fluttering of his pulse beneath his lips.

David can feel Patrick growing hard where the V of his hips presses against Patrick’s midrange denim, and he can’t stop clawing at Patrick’s back, his shoulders, the strong line of his hips. He feels weightless in the water, unmoored and overstimulated, like he can’t figure out the order of the world that will make up up and down down again. So he pulls his lips off of Patrick with a pained groan and unwraps his legs. Patrick looks at him, his face torn between shock and a raw, naked lust that threatens to sink David straight through the Earth. David reaches out and hooks one of the loops of Patrick’s belt with his fingers and pulls him in again, keeping just enough distance that they’re able to scramble to shore, tripping over each other in a tangle of limbs and giddy anticipation that sends David sprawling and Patrick on top of him.

Patrick’s hands come up to land on David’s shoulders, thumbs under the collarbone as his fingers dig into the meat and he lays David backwards, pressing into the V of his thighs with his full weight. David can’t remember a time Patrick’s ever touched him with anything but an open palm, generous and giving and kind. Not this frantic, digging clutch that pulls at the core of David. 

They’re both breathing heavily, Patrick from the sudden physical exertion, David from the kind of dizziness that accompanies a complete upending of reality. Now that they’re out of the water and the full gravity of Patrick presses him into the Earth, the buckle of his only belt pressing into the thick seam at the crotch of David’s culottes, David freezes. Patrick pulls back, his eyes huge, even more owlish than normal, as his pupils expand with what could be desire, or could be panic. David reaches out and places a hand over Patrick’s heart, feeling the heave of his chest and the race of his heart and knowing, in a part of his mind that isn’t really thinking, that this will be the moment that sticks with him. That no matter how this shakes out — and David still doesn’t entirely believe that it will end well — he’ll remember this moment, the press of summer heat and Patrick’s gaze on his skin in equal measure. 

Patrick dips his head and David can smell his toothpaste, and a hint of stonefruit, and David smiles as he — with more care than he’s ever given anything in his life — presses his lips to Patrick’s. It’s the polar opposite of the kiss they just ended, like the gravity tethering them to Earth is pulling them into slow tenderness instead of a frantic claiming. David starts to pull back, but Patrick inhales and chases his mouth, his hands digging almost painfully into David’s bicep. David stops moving, and it’s like a starting gun goes off in Patrick, who is licking into David’s mouth like David is all thirty-one flavors at a Baskin-Robbins. David breathes into Patrick and focuses on all the points their bodies touch, desperate to calm the racing of his heart and the nervous tension that skates across his muscles like lightning. 

He feels the pads of Patrick’s fingers press into the soft flesh on the back of his arm, his thumbs digging in just under the edge of his t-shirt sleeve, just shy of painful. He feels the way Patricks chest brushes against his, the coarse drag of their wet cotton shirts against one another, the friction causing more water to sluice down Patrick’s ribs, to pool in David’s bellybutton. David’s hands fall to Patrick’s hips, and he feels the way Patrick’s body moves, the shift of muscle and bulk that dips under David’s hands like a dance. Patrick has a body that’s compact, and unassumingly sexy, muscle that ropes along his body from years of baseball and shinny hockey back home. He’s not intimidating, but he’s solid, and even though the height battle might lean in David’s favor, Patrick makes him feel protected.

David is helpless against the slow, insistent onslaught of Patrick’s tongue into his mouth, the bite of teeth into his lower lip, the barest graze of stubble against his cheek, something he feels but can’t see, because even Patrick’s facial hair is understated and neat in comparison to David’s absolutely wild...everything. David’s hands drift from Patrick’s hips to the dip above his ass, up the long column of his back, and David’s not a musician but he thinks he might just compose a symphony on the sharps and flats of Patrick’s spine. 

Patrick shifts his body weight so he’s pressing more into David, a feat David wouldn’t have thought possible, but his hand tightens in Patrick’s hair reflexively and the noise that Patrick makes in the back of his throat is primal. It’s a  _ wanting  _ sound, and it punches at David when all his defenses are down. He pulls back, enough to actually put space between his lips and Patrick’s. They’re both panting, and there’s a delicious red high on Patrick’s cheeks. The hand on Patrick’s neck travels to his cheekbone, David’s thumb trailing just under his eye.

“You okay?” David asks, because he has to know. 

“Yeah, yes, mmhmm,” and then Patrick’s lips are back on his, needy and hot and pressing. David can’t help but moan a little bit, the sound swallowed by the growl that Patrick returns, just a little pressing of consonants that rolls off his tongue like a vibration. It’s a little thing that drives David wild, and soon the two of them are caught in an echochamber, the little sounds of desire joining the slowly growing chorus of crickets and cicadas. 

They lose track of time as the kissing morphs into something...more. The scrape of David’s nails across the expanse of Patrick’s back, which earns him a hiss and a slow grinding of Patrick’s hips. Patrick is so deep into the V of his thighs that David is cursing the stretch of fabric that keeps him from being all the way seated. Patrick’s hand wanders under the hem of David’s t-shirt, his fingers brushing along the trail of dark, coarse hair that trails from David’s navel downwards. David hooks an ankle around Patrick’s calf, and, without breaking the kiss, rolls them over so that his hands are bracketed on either side of Patrick’s head and he’s watching the slow flutter of Patrick’s pale lashes against the flush of his cheek and wondering what how much more beautiful Patrick would look if David could take him apart entirely. 

They’re pressed together from ankle to hip bones, David’s hightops tangling together with Patrick’s hiking boots, Patrick’s belt-buckle pressing the button of David’s culottes painfully into the tender skin just below his belly button. Patrick’s eyes are dark, his pupils blown, and he’s staring at David’s mouth like he’s trying to figure out how to get another piece of it. Patrick’s hand darts out and brushes a curl off David’s forehead. He messes with David’s hair for a bit, still damp from the water, and when his hand pulls back he’s got a tiny twig and dried leaf pinched in his fingers. David can only imagine how horrified he must look, from the way Patrick chuckles and tosses the offending bits of nature over his shoulder. “Sorry about that,” he says.

Patrick’s mouth finds David’s neck, impossibly soft and tender, and it makes something  _ ache _ in the pit of David’s stomach. Because this is just for today, just for this afternoon. Just so Patrick can practice, and experiment, and be safe while he does it. David is safe; that's all, and he needs to stop pretending this is anything more than just a trashy hookup in the woods. 

But as Patrick switches from tender kisses to something a little hotter, sucking hard on David’s neck in a way that threatens to leave a mark, David decides: he’s spent the last four fucking years  _ desperate  _ for this, so he’s going to enjoy it while he fucking has it. So he slides his body down just enough that he can get his mouth on Patrick’s collarbone, and matches Patrick’s earlier fervor in a spot Patrick can hide it tomorrow. 

“God, David,” Patrick says with a gasp. “This is just so—” He grinds his hips down and looks surprised that he's doing it.

David hisses and lifts his head to look at where their hips press together heavily. "I'd say it's been a successful experiment, for sure" His voice is too high in his ears, but he’s desperate to hold on to this a little longer. 

Patrick’s eyebrows furrow and he opens his mouth and closes it once before he says, “Experiment. Right. Well, guess I did get that  _ phase two _ after all.” His voice has dropped to deadpan, and David has no idea what it means. 

David wants to ask more. Wants to push into what’s put that tone in Patrick’s voice, but before he gets the chance Patrick lifts his head and presses his lips to David’s.

But the urgency is gone, and the tender softness they’d transitioned into isn’t there, either. There’s a thoughtfulness in it, and David tries to push everything else out of his mind, to inhale deeply and breathe into his body and out of his brain. He pushes back, pressing up into Patrick so that their lips war for control, the muscles cording in David’s forearms as he continues to keep his weight perched above Patrick. 

David wants him, wants to let the full weight of his body press Patrick into the earth, to give him a centering force to focus on as all the thoughts he’d kept so beautifully at bay until now threaten to come crashing into the moment. But Patrick is too tender, too caring, even as his lips leave David’s, and he crunches up to drag his lips down the line of David’s jaw, sucking gently on his pulse point, tongue running races up and down the valleys of the vein in David’s neck. David’s thoughts are spinning, the image of the Patrick of last month, tears in his eyes and fear in his voice, mingling with this Patrick, eyes lusty and voice scattered with longing. He wants to shut his eyes and let Patrick make a mess of him, let him suck a hickey into his neck, deep and purple and lasting. Something he can look at in the mirror tomorrow to remember. But he doesn’t know what doing that today will do to the Patrick of yesterday, if it matters, and how much.

David’s distracted thoughts are forced to stop racing for a single second when Patrick brushes the back of his knuckles over the crotch of David’s culottes, where his erection in pressing painfully into the zipper. David freezes, moan trapped in the back of his throat, and then Patrick does it again, flipping his hand over so that it’s the calloused surface of his palm dragging over the metal zipper with a little rasp. David’s hips buck before he can stop them, and he bites his lip as Patrick does it a third time, his pace slow and unhurried even as his lips continue to work into the flesh of David’s neck, right where it dips into his shoulder.

Patrick’s sturdy fingers land on the button and the word “wait” flies out of David’s mouth before he can pull it back. Luckily, he doesn’t have to think through why he was about to stop Patrick, because at the same moment an air-horn comes piercing through the afternoon stillness of the clearing, and Patrick’s hand immediately flies back like he’s been burned, and David can’t tell if it’s because of the airhorn, or because he asked. David presses his eyes together and isn’t sure whether he’s thrilled, or terrified, or more disappointed than he’s ever been in his entire life.

He can hear Patrick below him, breath quick and heavy. He licks his lips, and watches Patrick watch him, and he tries to smile a little. Patrick smiles back, but it’s a sad, tentative smile that David immediately knows means regret. He’s seen that smile on too many people, too many times, after the spell of a late night, or dark corner, wears off and he’s left with the cold light of day. But he’s pretty sure he can beat Patrick to the punch on any lingering regrets, and instead of doing what he wants — what he’s wanted for years now — and kissing Patrick with the patience and care that might smooth the worry out of his eyes, he clears his throat with a little cough and says the most inane thing he’s ever said.

“That’s the fastest it’s ever come. The horn! I mean.   
“The airhorn. For the end of Capture the Flag.” Patrick says it like he’s buffering the information, running it through his internal processors looking for some kind of algorithm that’ll make sense. David nods and pushes his palms into the ground beneath him until he’s in something resembling a seated position. Patrick sits up at the same time that he scoots back, scrubbing a hand across his chin and looking at David, confused. “David, I —” 

“Patrick, it’s fine. We absolutely do not have to talk about it. Things got carried away, it happens. And hey. Now you  _ really _ can’t say you’ve never really kissed a guy.” David knocks a loose fist against Patrick’s knee, a casual touch, the kind they’ve been sharing without trying since they met. But he can’t manage to make it sound like a joke, and Patrick’s got this look on his face that David doesn’t understand but doesn’t look like a happy face of someone who’s  _ glad  _ they almost started giving a hand job to their best friend from camp in the middle of the woods.

David had let them get too far, and probably scared Patrick so damn much he was running for the closet again. And the worst part was, David couldn’t really blame him. The last thing he’d want to do, tables turned, would be to get wrapped up with an intense guy with elaborate knitwear and literally no plan on the path in front of him.

“You’re sure you don’t want to talk about it?” Patrick asks to the palms of his hands.

“I am one  _ thousand  _ percent positive. Come on,” David pushes himself to standing, brushing off his hands and holding one out to Patrick. “Let’s get back, it’s early enough we can grab a nap before dinner  _ and  _ catch Stevie doing her walk of shame.” Patrick’s hand burns him like a brand, and David lets go as soon as Patrick is steady on his feet. There are too many voices shouting for dominance in his head, and all he wants to do is go to sleep to shut them up. 

“Mmm, d’you think those campers Jake was so worried about made it back okay?” Patrick says, and David chokes out a laugh. 

He brushes off the back of Patrick’s shirt, because they’re both covered in leaves and twigs and mud and now that they’re not sucking faces anymore, David is acutely aware of how  _ disgusting  _ it all is. Patrick returns the favor with a quiet chuckle, and David does his best to adjust his own hair into some semblance of something acceptable. They’re just going to have to hope the rest of camp thinks they got  _ really _ into the game. 

They don’t have time to do much else but hike after that, Patrick taking the lead and guiding them back through the forest in the slowly slipping late afternoon light. They take their time, and the walk doubles in the amount of time it normally takes, each of them quiet, wrapped up in their on thoughts and walking a safe, touch-proof distance apart. They just clear the tree-line by the edge of the baseball field when the blue team — Patrick and David’s team, apparently the victors — come pouring out of the woods and from that point on, it’s chaos. The exact kind of chaos that pulls Patrick off with Ted to celebrate, while a handful of counselors descend on David to ask him about Jake, and some campers who still weren’t back yet. Sometimes the Rose name meant he had to field managerial tasks when his parents were suspiciously absent.

He watches Patrick walk away into the crowd, Ted’s arm looped around his neck and he hollers about the Blue Team victory in capture the flag, and David promises himself that he’s going to talk to him after dinner. They’re going to sit down, like the adults they almost are, and David is going to tell him everything. That he’s going to miss Patrick next year; that he’s spent the last four years of his life spending 300 days a year waiting for the other 65; that he doesn’t know how he’s going to fall asleep at school knowing he’s never going to drift off to Patrick’s snore again. He vows to make Patrick listen, and see, and understand that — even if Patrick is never going to feel the same way, David feels  _ everything  _ for Patrick. That’s the only way he can be free of that clawing, stinging pull behind his ribcage every time he thinks about Patrick not  _ knowing _ . The sooner he tells him, the sooner David can exit this world, where Patrick is one giant question mark, and enter the world where Patrick is a period at the end of the sentence. He wants to rip the bandaid off, cause the hurt so he can start to heal, just. Not now.

But life rarely works in favor of well-laid plans, and he oversleeps for dinner, and then gets waylaid by Twyla who has decided  _ he’s  _ the person she needs to talk to about Stevie’s plans for the next year, and then it’s time for fireworks and trophy ceremonies and an ocean of melancholy that threatens to drown everyone in camp. This year, David included. 

*

The morning dawns earlier than any of them are ready for, and David swears he feels hungover, even though he’d gone to bed stone cold sober. Patrick is already gone when David wakes up, starting off his yearly tradition of walking all the freshman campers to the mess hall for one last breakfast before their bus loads up first. It’s tender, and sweet, and exactly the kind of thing David mocked him mercilessly for, until it meant Patrick wouldn’t be the first thing he had to see when he opened his eyes that morning. 

David took advantage of the “no wake-up call on the last day” rule to take an extra long shower and do his hair the way he likes, but requires more time in the bathroom than he usually tries to steal from his cabinmates. By the time he gets to breakfast, the kitchen staff are getting ready to pull platters. He rushes to fill his plate, plopping down at their table and looking for Patrick, who should already be here.

“Looking for your boyfriend?”

“I’m sorry, what was that? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of that giant hickey on your neck.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Shut up, it does to.”

“...does it?”

David rolls his eyes and throws a piece of bacon at her. “At least I didn’t let Jake turn me into a human Rorschach test last night.”

“Jealousy isn’t a good color on you, David.” He flips her off and she kisses her lips at him. “Besides, what do you care? Last I checked, you and Patrick were well on your way to something when I left.” David shrugs his shoulders and takes a long, slow drink of coffee that doesn’t require he meet Stevie’s eye. He hears her drop her fork. “You didn’t?! Tell me everything! 

“There’s nothing to tell, Stevie. Patrick is...working through some stuff, and I helped him out yesterday.”

“Yeah, helped him out with your tongue.” David squawks at her and she laughs. Patrick still isn’t anywhere to be found, though, and it’s starting to make David visibly nervous. “He’s not here, you know.”

“Who isn’t?”

“David.”

“Stevie.”

“He went to go help load up the freshman bus. Ray threw out his back at Capture the Flag yesterday.” 

“Of course he did.” 

“Come on, you can come hang out with me while I finish packing.”

“What an honor,” he quips, but he grabs both of their trays and heads for the trashcan. 

They’re half-way back to Stevie’s cabin when David sees him, standing next to the bus. His cheeks are rosy and his chest heaves as he tosses bag after bag into the storage hold. He uses the back of his hand to wipe sweat from his forehead, the mid-morning sun casting a golden haze around his shoulders that makes him look cast from fucking bronze. The sight of him makes David’s mouth go dry, makes his stomach feel like it’s full of lead. Every brilliant, incandescent moment between them yesterday seems like a soap bubble, just ready to pop. 

He sees David and raises a hand in a wave, calling out, “David!” and starting the jog towards him. There’s a look on his face, though, that isn’t happiness, and isn’t camaraderie, and David flashes back to the day before, Patrick’s features twisted in that same expression of doubt, and every self-preservation instinct David has slams down at once. He holds up a hand to Patrick, and Patrick slows from a jog to a walk.

“Hey! I’m gonna go help Stevie, but I’ll talk to you before you leave, yeah?” And his voice is so sharp, so false, so hollow, that he’s not sure it’s his voice, even as it still rings in his ears. Patrick stops moving completely, his shoulders rounding, his hand falling to his side.

“Absolutely, David,” he calls back. And David hates that his name still sounds the same, coming out of Patrick’s mouth. 

It’s the last thing they say to each other, as the day snowballs into more and more campers who need help, more and more flights that need catching and busses that need loading, until it’s past four, and David is walking onto a plane that’ll take him back home and, after that, into a long stretch of future without Patrick Brewer. 

**2008: Summer Before Freshman Year of College**

David keeps his word: it takes one month, three fights, and a chunk of his own savings to get his parents to agree, but this summer, instead of driving four hours east to New Brunswick, he takes a plane one hour south to New York. It’s the freest he’s ever felt. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have the best beta in the world — [helvetica_upstart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/) — and also the #1 trashy teenage David + Patrick cheerleader.
> 
> Come hang out with us on tumblr at [ships-to-sail](ships-to-sail.tumblr.com) and [storieswelove](storieswelove.tumblr.com)!


	6. A Wild Fire Born of Frustration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting close!

**2009: Summer Before Sophomore Year of College**

David’s dread is intensifying the closer the car gets to camp. Stevie is driving, and has had Sarah McLachlan’s _Afterglow_ jammed into the cassette player for the three straight hours they’ve been on the road. The last time David suggested that maybe, possibly, they consider playing a different album, she had threatened to skip their next scheduled snack stop.

So here he is, staring out the window, anxiety building, rage-eating Twizzlers and listening to Stevie sing “Train Wreck,” admittedly quite well, for the fourth time today. He wiggles in his seat, crossing his arms and legs a little tighter, bending forward and curling into himself as much as the confines of Stevie’s tiny car will allow for his long limbs. He takes a few deep, steadying breaths. Or at least, he tries to. 

David isn’t really sure how he let Stevie talk him into coming back as a counselor, after skipping last year. Except, he thinks as his anxiety kicks up a notch, the lewd “It’s His Sister” sign that lets him know they’re just twenty minutes out now, he knows _exactly_ how she talked him into this. Because he’s never been lonelier than he was his freshman year of college — and that’s counting the three month stint when his mom took Alexis with her while she filmed _Sunset Bay_ season 13 in Vancouver, leaving ten-year-old David behind in Toronto. 

College hadn’t been _all_ bad. He’d made good on his promise to do something for himself, for once, and spent the summer before college at an exclusive, intensive art program in Manhattan. A far cry from his summers spent drenched in bug spray and avoiding team sports, he’d spent eight glorious weeks rubbing elbows — and sometimes other body parts — with some of the best and coolest artists his age he’d ever met. He’d roamed free for the first time in his life, and he wondered if that was how Alexis felt while she followed friends and boyfriends all over the world. He’d found a tiny Polish pub in Greenwich Village with a hidden patio in the back, where he’d yelled about modern art with his new friends as he downed pierogies and beer they never carded for. He’d gone to a Beirut concert, a band he discovered through a new guy named Matthew, who later became an old hookup named Matthew, and even got a preview of songs off an unreleased album. He’d made art he was proud of, really proud of, for the first time in his life, and even started to believe maybe he’d found his _thing._ The thing he could keep doing for forever. It was incredible. 

The school year was...less so. His summer program friends were in the city too, but they rarely invited him out once the semester started. The people in his program were even more aloof than David, and with the exception of late-night parties with cheap liquor, or the two-month not-a-relationship with a fellow student named Carolina, he quickly found himself back at square one. 

Self-preservation, however, had made David particularly excellent at being alone, so he took advantage of all the free museum days his student ID would get him into, and filled his days with long, wandering walks through the East Village. 

He missed Stevie and Patrick so much it was a physical ache in his chest. 

So when Stevie starts needling him about his summer plans — apparently Mutt was backing out of being a counselor at the last minute: ”he’s going on a _pine cone harvest_ , David. Can you fucking imagine?” — it only takes a few of their weekly phone calls filled with pointed questions and one admittedly dramatic rant on his part that he doesn’t quite remember the details of, before he agrees to come back as a counselor this year. 

And it’s. It’s weird. 

Because David swore this place off. He made a big show about never stepping foot here again, and now here he is, crawling back with his tail between his legs. It pokes at a deep, dark fear that uncertainty is a sign of weakness, means people will stop trusting his opinion all together. And David has very little to his name — certainly not his dignity anymore — but he at least has taste and good opinions. And if people start to doubt him, then they’ll start to doubt his judgement, and then David will have literally nothing left to get him through an ugly headspace. 

Like clockwork, Stevie interrupts his brooding spiral. “Are you _excited_?” she asks as she turns right down the long dirt road that leads to camp. She looks over at him briefly, her shit eating grin a mile wide; it makes her look almost evil.

“Mhm, yep, absolutely,” David says, turning from Stevie to look straight ahead. “Can’t wait.” He can see she’s still smiling out of the corner of his eye, and he _hates_ it.

Because Stevie knows. And David knows that Stevie knows. And Stevie knows that David knows that Stevie knows. And this whole thing is fucking awful and why didn’t he just stay home this summer and sulk around the house like a normal person? At least then he wouldn’t be trapping himself for eight weeks with Patrick Brewer and his loud fucking face. 

*

But when they pull into the camp, and David _does_ see Patrick’s face, he stops dead in his tracks. David somehow managed to forget that two years have passed for Patrick, too. 

Patrick is _beautiful._ His cheeks are still round, but there’s a thin line of stubble on his jaw and his eyes are bright, his cheekbones catching the sun and making him look, for lack of a better word, rosy. He’s always been beautiful, but the years playing progressively competitive baseball mean that now his shoulders are broad enough to pull at his t-shirt, and the cuffed sleeves tighten at the indentation of his bicep in a way that sends a single word rocketing through David’s brain: _squeeze_. His hair is long enough to be curly, and his mid-wash, classically-cut denim clings to his thighs like a vine around a tree-trunk. He’s got an obscene number of things in his pockets, which has the unfortunate side effect of drawing David’s eyes directly to Patrick’s general crotch area. 

Which is of course when Patrick notices him, while David is stuck in some cartoon-style jaw drop. Patrick is standing behind a folding table, checking in the other counselors — because of _course_ he got here earlier than everyone — and he looks shocked for a second, before the shock gives way to a tentative smile and a tiny wave with his free hand, wrist barely lifting. David, somehow, miraculously, raises his arm at the elbow and gives a half wave back.

It’s not like they haven’t spoken for two years. Patrick did occasionally chat him on Facebook, to send him a song he thought David might like, or just to say hi. And for David’s part, he still made sure to text Patrick _happy birthday!_ every year, even if he always debated pretending not to remember. 

But short, stunted Facebook messages and new profile photos are not the same as seeing him here, glistening in the sun like this is a fucking Sports Illustrated shoot and not a rural Canadian summer camp, and David has never considered grand theft auto as hard as he is at this very moment.

Instead, he just stands there like some small, pathetic animal with a broken Fight or Flight response, mouth slightly agape and unable to look away. 

He manages to move again when he feels a hand on his elbow, and turns to see Stevie nudging him in the direction of the table. Patrick finishes checking in Ted — who turns around with a giant, oversized “Oh my god, David!” and a hug that David somehow goes too low for and now they’re wrapped around each other as awkwardly as possible — before Patrick looks at David and Stevie again. 

“Well, this is a surprise,” Patrick says, lips turned down in a tiny smile, and David can’t believe he’s somehow made it two years without seeing that smile. His entire body relaxes at the sight of it, like some Pavlovian response, conditioned through summers of roasted marshmallows and late night note passing and awful talent show serenades. David hates it. “Stevie,” Patrick says, looking at her. “You didn’t...uh…” 

“Yeah, sorry,” says Stevie, a glint in her eye. She may as well have sprouted red horns. “It slipped my mind.” 

“Mmmm,” is all Patrick says in response, and looks down at his checklist. “David, I guess you’re taking Mutt’s campers? They didn’t give me an updated list, sorry. So that’s cabin...thirteen, it looks like. Our uh—”

“Our old cabin, yep. Stevie told me. Well I should…” he trails off and points vaguely in the direction of the cabins. He needs to get out of here ten minutes ago. He pushes his sunglasses up his face and starts to move as fast as his still-trembling legs will carry him.

“It was nice to see you, David,” he hears Patrick say, barely audible, as David steps away. 

*

“So you just,” David’s voice is pitching up and his hands are flying everywhere he’s ready to take all of Stevie’s flannels, run them up the flagpole, and crazy glue the entire rope down so she has to watch them flap limply and fade the rest of the summer. “Didn’t tell him I was coming? You thought this would be like, what? A funny joke? A fun _welcome back_ present for me? What, Stevie?” He’s out of breath from his rant, and she’s just standing there in the middle of his cabin, smiling knowingly. He throws a pillow at her.

She bats it away and keeps looking at him. “So, it’s been two years. Does this mean you’re ready to talk about it?”

“Ex _cuse_ me? Talk about _what_ ?” Like he didn’t spend the whole walk to the cabin thinking about _exactly_ what. 

Stevie rolls her eyes. “So no, you’re not. Okay, David. But you’re going to have to deal with this eventually.”

“There. Is. Nothing. To. Deal. With.” He pokes at the air with each word, the desire to make her believe running like electricity underneath his skin. “It is _incredibly_ rude that you didn’t tell me Patrick had no idea I was coming. But it’s fine now. We’re fine. So. You know. Just like old times.”

“‘Old times’?” Stevie says with a laugh, and David _hates_ her. “So you’re going to spend six weeks pretending you don’t want to jump his bones before making out with him in the woods?”

“You are an actual monster.”

“I missed you too, David. Now hurry up and unpack, I’m fucking starving.” 

*

Because the universe does not believe David deserves one second of breathing room in his pitiful existence, Patrick is already in the mess hall when they show up. David piles his plate extra high with macaroni and cheese, because _fuck all of this_ , and Stevie marches them right over to Patrick’s table and drops down in a seat, never giving David a chance to protest. 

“Patrick.” 

“Stevie.” 

She smirks. “How were baseball finals?” 

“Oh my god, I forgot I hadn’t told you! We won!” 

“Patrick!” she says, and she slaps him in her excitement. 

“How was the softball tournament?” Patrick asks, but David cuts them off before Stevie can answer. 

“Wow, so you two just talk about sports now, huh?” David can hear the bitterness in his own voice, and he hates it almost as much as he hates himself right now. 

Patrick looks over at him and his lips turn down down in a smile again. “Sorry, David. Forgive us. How was _your_ softball tournament?” 

David rolls his eyes and flips him off, but it gets all three of them laughing, and David starts to feel the tension of the afternoon ease away. 

They spend the rest of dinner reminiscing, and before David knows it, Patrick is checking his watch and announcing that it’s 8 o’clock. 

“Oh shit,” Stevie says, and makes to stand.”Okay, I need to go finish unpacking before the rugrats get here tomorrow.” 

“Yeah, um, same,” David says lamely. Dinner might have been good, but he’s not ready to be alone with Patrick. He’s still not sure he’ll _ever_ be ready. 

“Oh, I’ll walk back with you guys,” Patrick says, and stands up too. David almost chokes on his own tongue. Patrick must’ve changed out of his earlier basketball shorts, because what he’s wearing now are tiny blue board shorts, his thighs thicker and more toned than David has ever seen them. An involuntary shocked sound slips out of the back of David’s throat, and Patrick catches him staring when he turns to the noise. 

He smiles at David, wide and bright. “I went for a swim earlier,” he says in response to the unasked question. 

“And the creek ate half your swim trunks?” David manages to cough out.

“They’re a European cut,” Patrick says, kind of defensively, his shoulders dropping. 

“Oh, I know,” David says, and he doesn’t mean for it to come out wrapped in a kind of feral knowing, but it does, and he can’t take it back. Patrick brightens while Stevie laughs, and David tries to remember how to make words. Patrick pushes ahead of them to lead the way back down to the cabins. 

Stevie and Patrick, it turns out, had grown even closer the summer David was away. _Of course_ , he thinks, _why wouldn’t they_ ? He isn’t jealous, though the twisting feeling in his stomach would suggest otherwise — he’s just terrified of being lonely. He doesn’t _do_ groups, and for good reason. Historically, it’s meant David was just there to be used for money, or drugs, or sex, and abused for all those reasons and more. It had always been different with Stevie and Patrick, but that doesn’t stop the sickening feeling in his gut that he’ll be cut out and spend this summer as lonely as he was in school, with the added razor sharp edge of two best friends he lost because he had some bullshit to prove by not coming back, and he couldn’t even do that right. 

Stevie saves him from his spiral by regaling Patrick with the tale of the first time they got poison oak, because his dad wanted flowers on the tables for the Parent Info Sessions, but was too cheap to buy them. Which makes their stoned poison oak adventure four years ago all the more embarrassing. By the time they’re at Stevie’s cabin, they’re doubled over in laughter, and David has a stitch in his side. 

“Okay, okay, okay,” Stevie says, wheezing. “I really need to unpack and like, have some alone time tonight.” 

“Sick!” David says, still cackling. 

She laughs harder and flips him the finger as she walks into her cabin, and David is suddenly hyper aware that he’s alone with Patrick for the first time since the graveyard _two years_ ago. He clears his throat while he reaches for something to say. “So.” 

Patrick’s cheeks are flush and he’s rubbing the back of his neck and David is having intrusive thoughts about licking the divot in Patrick’s forearm. “So,” he says back. 

“Uh, how’s school?” David asks, because it’s the first coherent thought he can think that doesn’t involve his tongue and some glistening, concaving, or protruding part of Patrick’s body. 

Patrick huffs out a shaky laugh and shoves both hands in his tiny pockets. They barely fit halfway. He looks ridiculous. David needs to stop staring. “School is good,” he says. “How about you? Stevie said something about you not loving New York? ?” 

“Yeah, well, Stevie is a gossip. New York is fine.” 

“Just fine?” 

“It’s good—it’s great. New York is _great_.” 

Patrick laughs. “Okay, David.” And it’s the first time David has heard Patrick say his name like that in two years, warm and friendly and full of affection. It makes his heart clench at the same time as it makes his shoulders drop. 

The awkward small talk carries them all the way to David’s cabin, where they stand outside for at least an hour, playing catch-up in earnest. David tells him about New York, and lets slip that he’s maybe, possibly, just a teeny, tiny bit lonely. Patrick, in turn, tells David that he’s out at school, and at home, and to Rachel. They don’t talk much more about it, although David’s head floods with questions. But it’s Patrick’s story to tell, and all he seems willing to say is that he’s working hard to embrace being openly queer. 

“Hence the shorts?” David says, splaying his palm out to indicate the tiny swim trunks like he’s the Vanna White of itty bitty swimwear. 

Patrick laughs, loud and clear through the night air, and David is so unbelievably transfixed by Patrick that it takes his own breath away. 

“You know, I have you to thank for that,” Patrick says. 

For one nerve wracking second, David thinks Patrick is about to talk about the kiss at the graveyard. “What?” is all he can manage to croak out. 

“For the shorts. Well.. For all of it, really. Whenever I wanted to do the safe thing, and _not_ try on the new, tighter button down, or flirt with a guy at a party...I just thought ‘What Would David Do?’ and it helped. It made me — you made me — braver, you know?” 

The one blissful thing about being apart from Patrick for two years was that David had forgotten. Forgotten how Patrick could just _say_ these things, clear and honest and absolutely soul crushing, like he was telling David about buying bug spray or his distaste for the camp’s turkey. David’s eyes are burning and he blinks quickly to stop the tears from falling. “Well, that is a really lovely thing to say.”

“It’s true,” Patrick says. “You’re like, the bravest person I know, David.” 

That cracks something inside of David. He isn’t brave. He’s never been brave. He’s only ever known how to take the path of most self-preservation. That Patrick could have spent four summers with David and come out the other end thinking David had _any_ kind of courage in his body is unfathomable. And it is — officially — too much. He needs space, needs air that isn’t shared with Patrick, because even here, in the middle of the fucking woods, having Patrick in his proximity is stiffling. David clears his throat. “Okay, well, I should uh, go to bed,” he says, gesturing toward the inside of the cabin, as if Patrick might otherwise expect David to crawl off to a tent somewhere in the trees. 

Patrick smiles easily at him. “Yeah, me too. See you tomorrow?” 

“Mhm,” David says, twisting his mouth to suppress a smile or a grimace, he isn’t really sure. 

Patrick is three steps away before he turns around. “I’m really happy that you’re back, David.” 

David can’t help it — he’s never been able to help it — he’s smiling in earnest now. “Good night, Patrick.” 

*

David wakes with a start to someone knocking on his door. His first thought is that someone is here to kill him, except what kind of polite fucking serial killer _knocks_ on a screen door? 

He’s still frozen, unable to decide whether to crawl out of bed and deal with it or snuggle down further until whoever it is goes away, when — 

“David?” he hears Patrick’s voice tentative through the dark. 

“Patrick? What the _fuck_? You scared the shit out of me!” He props himself up on one elbow and sees Patrick’s silhouette against the pale moonlight outside. “What’s going on?” 

“I um,” Patrick starts, and his voice is shaking. “I…” 

David is alarmed now. “Are you okay?” 

“Yeah, you know what, never mind. Go back to sleep.” 

David sits fully upright at that. “Absolutely not. Come in here and close the door, you’ll let the moths in and then I’ll miss out on even more sleep while I kill you and bury the body.” 

Patrick chuckles and lets the wooden door slam behind him. Now that he’s inside, David can see that he’s carrying a pillow and a blanket. He waits for Patrick to talk, but Patrick just shifts his weight back and forth and listens to the floorboards creak.

“So, still afraid of the dark, then?”

Patrick blushes, a shadow in the dim light, but there's no unkindness in David’s voice. Patrick nods. “I was wondering...can I sleep with you? Tonight? Here, in your cabin,” he adds quickly, holding up the pillow and blanket to make his meaning clear. 

“I—yes, of course. Don’t be ridiculous. Mi cabin es su cabin.” He cringes at the awkward turn of phrase. He wishes the ground would swallow him whole. He gestures at all the empty beds and hopes Patrick will just move past it. 

Patrick drops his bedding onto the mattress adjacent to David’s, and drops down on his stomach facing him. It lines them up to fall asleep head-to-head again, and it makes David’s chest ache. “Why are you on the bottom bunk?” Patrick asks. “You always slept on the top when we were campers.” 

Later, David will blame being half-asleep in the middle of the night, because he shakes his head and confesses: “Oh, no, you know I hate heights. It was always bottom bunk until the summer you came.” 

David’s heart might beat out of his chest when he realizes what he’s said. Which, he thinks might be the best case scenario, if it means not enduring this awful silence any longer. 

When Patrick speaks, it’s just to say, “huh,” quiet as can be. And then he rolls over on his back, and within five minutes he’s asleep. 

David doesn’t fall asleep again until the sky outside his windows is the color of Patrick’s favorite blue T-shirt. 

*

Jake, in addition to his mediocre work as a counselor, is leading woodworking weekends for the campers this year. 

The counselors have to chaperone, but David made it eight summers without building a birdhouse, and he’s not about to start now. 

Jake gives him a five minute primer on staining, and puts David to work on some furniture Jake has made for the rec room — but not without a comment about how good David is with his hands. 

“Mmm okay,” is all David says, because he has neither the time nor the energy to deal with Jake’s bullshit, and turns back to the table he’s working on. 

Patrick, on the other hand, coughs loudly and says, “hey, Jake, I think one of the campers needs your help with their book ends.” 

*

When Alexis shows up at 6pm on his birthday, he’s shocked. Which, if he’s being fair, he’s always a little shocked when she pops up anywhere, like an annoyingly cheerful little gopher. But this time, she’s standing in her Jimmy Choos in the middle of camp, holding two giant shopping bags full of booze, with Ted in tow, arms laden with solo cups and a cooler of ice.

“David!” she crows, trying to wave at him with her hands full. 

“Oh my god,” he whispers. 

“Is that —” Patrick starts to ask, smile slowly spreading across his face as understanding blooms in his eyes. 

“Alexis, what are you doing here?” David marches across the distance between them and stops right in front of her. They’re not really hugging people, but he can’t exactly give her a high-five or a hand-shake. He’s saved from having to do much, though, when she goes up on her toes and presses two kisses to the air above each cheek.

“Are you just, like, so shocked to see me?”

“Considering you’re supposed to be in a yurt in Mongolia with Ashton Kutcher or whoever? I'm...beyond stunned."

"David, that was like a week ago," she says, as if he has 24/7 access to her Facebook-tracked escapades out here in the sticks. "Anyway, I'm here now! Happy birthday!"

Patrick is standing at his elbow, eyes flicking back and forth between David and Alexis, his smile devastating.

"Ohmygod, who are _you_?"

"I'm Patrick," he says, holding out his hand, which Alexis immediately takes and wraps in one of her weird limp-wristed shake/hold combos.

" _You're_ Patrick?!" David wants to throttle her, even if she did just get here, because she says it like she's seen him naked or something. 

"And you must be Alexis," Patrick says smoothly. "It's really nice to finally meet you."

"Naturally," she says with a little hair flip, finally letting go of Patrick's hand, taking a beat. “So, who’s ready for a —” 

“Did someone say party?” Stevie materializes like a moth to a flame, grabbing one of the giant, liquor-filled bags from Ted, and immediately heads toward the woods. And, like she’s the fucking Pied Piper, they all follow. 

*

David has no idea who once said that “necessity was the mother of invention”, but he supposes that’s a much neater way of saying “drunk, horny young adults with nothing but booze, the woods, and a determination to get as fucked up as possible is the mother of invention.” They take turns passing miscellaneous bottles of clear liquor around while they walk, playing a game of “Never Have I Ever” that gets wickedly pointed whenever Alexis, David, or Stevie is asking, meaning that of course they arrive at the graveyard with David already drunk, and Stevie and Alexis not far behind.

They drop their bags into a small pile in the middle of the clearing, Alexis reaching deep into one of the bags to grab a small portable speaker. She plugs it into her phone and a few quick taps later and David groans at the thumping bass line that fills the air around them. “Alexis, you know I _loathe_ this song.”

“Come on, David. No one _loathes_ “Get Low”.” And, as if to prove a point, at that moment each and every one of them shouts, “UNTIL THE SWEAT DRIPS DOWN MY BALLS,” and David takes another shot just so he doesn’t murder every single one of them. 

Luckily, Stevie pulls a pack of cards out of her back pocket and challenges them all to a game of Presidents and Assholes, which David immediately agrees to. They sit in a circle while she deals, and as the sun sinks below the tree line, they drink their way through the first half of the bottles they lugged through the forest. 

“Watch, watch, watch,” Patrick slurs, waving his hands through the air. “‘Specially you, David, you’ve never seen this.” He flips over a red plastic cup in front of him and begins to clap and pat his way through a rhythm that sounds a little bit like a train on the tracks. David watches him do it, his strong, thick-fingered hands flipping and slapping against the thin plastic, and a drunk little giggle escapes him. Patrick finishes, and they call clap and holler, David asking him to do it again.

Patrick does it again, slower this time, a smile slow and liquid as it pools across his face like honey. His eyes look amber in the light of the small campfire Ted managed to get going, and the slower he goes, the more intently David watches Patrick’s hands. 

“My turn,” David says after the third time he sees Patrick doing the slap-cup routine, and he grabs for Patrick’s cup, but not quickly enough to stop Patrick from snapping it up first, leaning back and holding it just out of David’s reach.

“That’s my cup! Get your own!” 

David laughs and lunges for him, going up on his knees and greatly overestimating the force he needs. He pitches forward and straight into Patrick, their chests colliding as Patrick goes spilling backwards, the cup knocked from his hand and across a stretch of grass. David is on top of him, still reaching for the cup Patrick doesn’t have anymore, and they’re both shaking with laughter. Just as one of them starts to calm down, the other one laughs harder, and they’re caught in a feedback loop that might never have stopped, if Stevie hadn’t looked over at them and catcalled, her loud whooping echoing off the trees around them.

“Not again, you two,” she laugh-screams, and if a voice could obnoxiously wink, that’s exactly what hers would be doing “Old times sake, huh David?!”

David scrambles backwards off of Patrick, shooting her a subtle glare that makes Ted and Alexis laugh, too, although David is surprised they can see it, wrapped around each other like spider monkeys. 

Patrick is still laying back on the grass, catching his breath, staring at the stars, his eyes wide and glassy as he eventually lets his gaze drift to David’s face. He smiles, soft and fuzzy, and David feels butterflies hatch in his stomach, and his throat, and the palms of his hands when Patrick says, “she’s wrong, you know. Not like old times. Last time I was on top.”

And in his drunken haze, David has the clearest thought he’s had in months:

No way does he make it through the summer without kissing Patrick.

*

The worst part about being counselors is having to deal with middle schoolers — David didn’t like them when he _was_ one, and that state of affairs hasn’t gotten better since hitting adulthood. The _best_ part? Having a car. 

The camp’s water heater breaks one day mid-July, and the warehouse says they have a replacement, but the next delivery slot is in two weeks. So David and Patrick are sent two hours west in Patrick’s truck for a pickup instead.

Patrick surprises David by stopping off at the general store in the neighboring town to get road trip snacks, despite his insistence to David that “two hours hardly qualifies as a road trip.” David is giddy, stocking up on Cheetos and generic red licorice and two bottles of cherry coke. His fingers are bright orange before they even get back to the car. 

It feels like freedom, David thinks, sitting in the passenger seat, barreling down the empty two-lane highway, while his friend sings along to Tina Turner far better than anyone has a right to. It feels like a future David doesn’t dare to hope for, but one he wants so badly that it burns the back of his throat.

*

There are other perks to being counselors too — namely, that they have a lounge all to themselves. 

‘Lounge’ is a generous word for the tiny room into which the camp has crammed a loveseat, an armchair, coffee table and ten-year-old TV set, but it has a big, worn “No Campers Allowed” tin sign on the door, respected by the kids and strictly enforced by the counselors, and that alone makes the space a haven. 

Jake has been slowly adding in pieces of his own, a hodge podge of beautiful wooden chairs mixed in with the worn-out ‘60s sofa set, and it’s made movie nights a hell of a lot more comfortable. Boxes on boxes of Rose Video VHSs ended up at camp, so as long as they don’t want to watch anything newer than 2003, they always have good movies to choose from. 

Tonight, Stevie and Twyla insist on _Hocus Pocus._ David tries to make them see reason — a Halloween movie in August is incorrect — but he’s immediately outvoted. So he puts himself in charge of snacks, because if he’s going to sit through this movie, the plot of which he has _no_ memory, they had at least better be well fed. 

He uses his Camp Owner’s Son privileges to persuade the kitchen staff to let him in after hours, and he and Stevie emerge victorious, ladened with bowls of spiced popcorn, homemade trail mix, strawberries, and oreos with peanut butter. 

They’re the last ones into the room and so, after unceremoniously dropping the food on the table, are left to try to find their places among the people already crammed together, fifteen sets of limbs pressed together into seven seats, laps and spaces between bracketed knees. 

Stevie stakes out her spot at Twyla’s feet, curled up like a cat while Twyla strokes her hair, like an explicitly queer Bond villain, instead of just a coded one. 

The arrangement leaves David with only two choices: the floor, or some configuration of the armchair with Patrick. And as badly as he wants to drop himself right in Patrick’s lap and see what happens, David isn’t foolish enough to be that bold. The potential expiration date on a summer fling with Patrick has stopped David in his tracks all summer; he’s terrified of finding out how much more he’ll want it once he has it. 

So he settles for crouching at Patrick’s feet, but Bette Middler hasn’t even appeared on screen before David is too uncomfortable to stand it, and he perches on the arm of Patrick’s armchair instead. 

With his Helmut Lang hoodie pulled over his head, perched precariously on the seat, David feels like one of those giant, mutant crows from that movie franchise he hates. What David doesn’t hate, though, is how Patrick leans his head against David’s side and keeps it there as they watch. 

It’s been years since David has seen _Hocus Pocus_ , he realizes, when the witches appear on screen, and he’s immediately reminded of — 

“ _Oh my god_ ,” he hisses, and he’s already laughing as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. He scrolls through and finds a photo of his mom from earlier in the year, wearing a wig of tight, curly blond ringlets and a full, leather two-piece cape combo, complete with hood arranged halfway on her head. He holds the phone in front of Patrick’s face, who looks from it to the TV and back. 

“My god, it’s the fourth, long lost Sanderson Sister.” 

And that does it. They both collapse in a fit of giggles, David doubled over on his crossed legs, shaking with laughter.

Their friends try to shush them, throw popcorn at them, but everything just makes them laugh harder. 

And David is laughing _so_ hard, that he loses his already fragile balance and falls sideways _right_ onto Patrick’s lap, which somehow makes Patrick laugh even harder, head thrown back and legs kicked forward, so that David has to flounder and writhe to get any leverage at all. As soon as he’s facing the ceiling, he reaches behind himself and uses the other arm of the chair to pull himself into some semblance of a sitting position, using the wingtip of the armchair against his shoulder to steady himself. Patrick finally stops shaking enough to help. 

Which is how David, somehow, miraculously, finds himself sitting in Patrick’s lap for the rest of the movie, legs crossed and flung across Patrick’s right knee, Patrick’s left arm tight around him. It’s not the most comfortable David has ever been, and David’s back is getting stiff from holding himself still, but the only way he’s willingly moving out of Patrick’s lap is by request or collapse. 

David tries to watch the movie, he really does. When the mediocre plot won’t hold his attention, he tries to focus on how hot Sarah Jessica Parker is instead. But stunning though she might be, it isn’t nearly enough to distract him from how Patrick’s fingers are digging into his side, which has the unfortunate effect of reminding him of the last time Patrick’s hands gripped him anywhere. He focuses on his own breathing instead. 

They’re near the end of the movie when David does, eventually, need to adjust himself slightly on Patrick’s leg. Patrick looks away from the movie, and up at David with sleepy eyes, and smiles. 

“You were wearing this when I met you,” he says quietly, fiddling with one of the cuffs of David’s hoodie with his unoccupied hand. 

David tries as hard as he can to catch his smile. “Was I?” He knows he was. 

Patrick nods. “I turned around, and there was this cranky, cute boy with a dead squirrel on his hood.” 

David can’t catch his smile this time. “Oh, I was cute, was I?”

Patrick squeezes David’s side, giving him another sleepy smile and a little eye roll as he turns back toward the TV. 

David still has no idea what the fuck the _Hocus Pocus_ plot is. 

*

The second woodworking weekend, Patrick drops a box he’s been working on in front of David’s staining station. 

“How’d you learn to do this, anyway? I didn’t see Jake helping you very much,” David says, admiring the hard, clean lines of the cedar planks. 

“Well, I’ve had a lot of practice working with wood, David,” Patrick says, in the same voice he uses to talk about the weather. 

David needs to change the subject before he fucking combusts. “Ah. Uh. So. What is this for anyway?” he says, as he starts the methodical process of working the stain into the wood. It’s easier to focus on his hands than on Patrick’s face. 

“Oh,” Patrick says, and something in his voice makes David look up. “It’s a cedar chest for your knits. That box you’ve been using is in pretty bad shape. Plus, you don’t need another vendetta against moths.” 

Yeah, David is definitely going to kiss him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [helvetica_upstart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/) is the greatest. That's all. 
> 
> Come hang out with us on tumblr at [ships-to-sail](ships-to-sail.tumblr.com) and [storieswelove](storieswelove.tumblr.com)!


	7. You're the Only Song I Want to Hear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been updated! Thanks for sticking this out with us!

**2009: Summer Before Sophomore Year of College, continued**

It happens the day the campers are all away. 

The counselors have split off for an end-of-summer camping trip, half taking the kids, and half staying behind to start closing up camp. No one was foolish enough to suggest David be part of the camping group, more hindrance than help in the wild, what with the flesh-eating moths and heightened odds of being murdered first. 

So he’s been relegated to counting and sorting, mindless work he can do with his iPod mini blasting Kelly Clarkson in his ears. 

David doesn’t check his phone while he’s inventorying the sports equipment shed, so it’s an hour before he sees he has three missed calls – one more than standard – and a text from Alexis that just says “SOS!” He calls her back six times in rapid succession, but her phone must be off, or she’s out of service range, because it goes straight to voicemail every time. He slumps to the ground, right onto the twigs and dirt and it doesn’t even occur to him to care. He just stares at his phone, counting the minutes till he thinks enough time has passed that her phone might be working again. 

*

That’s how Patrick finds him, half an hour and eleven unanswered calls to his sister later, clutching his old T-Mobile Sidekick, attempting his breathing exercises before he has a full-blown meltdown that leaves him out of commission when he does eventually find out what Alexis’s emergency is.

“David? Why're you sitting in the dirt?” Patrick sounds concerned, and looks even moreso. David can’t deal with this right now. 

“Nothing, it’s fine. I’m fine. Just go back to...whatever.” He waves his hand vaguely, hoping it leans more “lofty” and less “frantic.”

He misses the mark. 

“David,” Patrick says softly, so softly, and David literally cannot handle this right now. He doesn’t have a single guard up except the one ready to jump into action for Alexis, and it isn’t fair that the universe is throwing  _ this _ at him in the middle of a crisis. He needs to be alone. Patrick crouches down to the floor and sits, knees touching, cross-legged in front of him. “Alexis again?” 

David nods, because he can’t trust his voice. It’s already taking all his willpower not to start crying again. 

“What’s going on?” 

“She—she—” and David's trying so hard to talk but the tears are fighting their way out, and before he can catch them, his entire body is wracked with sobs. Patrick has his hand on David’s leg and he’s running soothing motions up and down it and making soft  _ shhh shhh shhh  _ noises. David’s breathing starts to return to normal, but Patrick keeps a steady hand on his knee, thumb tracing circles on the side of his leg. David takes a deep breath. “I didn’t have my phone on me. She called me  _ three times _ and texted me ‘sos,’ and now her phone is off or lost or stolen or at the bottom of the ocean and I’ve tried calling her like ten times and if she isn’t okay it’s going to be my fault and there’s nothing I can fucking  _ do _ .” 

It’s getting harder to breathe again, and Patrick returns to running his hand along David’s knee. “David,” he says, as gently as ever. “Breathe. You really can't do anything if you pass out. Do you think you can walk to your cabin?” 

David nods, but says, “I can’t. I still have to sweep the rec room, and restock the soap dispensers in the bathroom and—” 

“Just give me your list. I’ll do all of it. I’m ahead of schedule anyway, and you need to go lie down.” 

Just once, would it kill Patrick not to be this impossibly nice? Just one time, couldn’t he be a normal fucking person so David didn’t have one more sharp, needling thing jabbing at the soft space underneath his ribs. “I can’t make you do that.” 

“You’re not  _ making _ me do anything. I’m offering.”

“Plus,” David keeps protesting, even as the ache to lie down fills his bones like lead, “when they don’t see me out here, they’re going to come look for me in my cabin, and I just can’t deal with a lecture on top of—”

“Go to my cabin,” Patrick suggests quickly. “No one is going to check in there. You can lay down in my bed – yes, the sheets are clean – and I’ll bring you your charger in a little while.” 

David is out of excuses. He goes to Patrick’s room and throws himself onto Patrick's bad and stares at his phone like he can manifest a suddenly responsive Alexis.

*

Patrick’s pillow smells like the cheap camp detergent, and his off-brand shampoo, and the nape of his neck, and David  _ buries _ himself in it. He has exactly enough energy to call Alexis one more time, shoot off a text that says “call me asap!!!!” and make sure the ringer and vibrate on his phone are turned on, before he collapses into sleep. 

The first time he wakes up, his phone is laying next to him, charging, and he paws at it enough to see: no new notifications. His stomach drops but he falls back asleep. 

The second time, the light coming in through the windows is dim, so it must be close to sunset. He checks his phone. 7:08. Still nothing from Alexis. He tries calling two more times. He falls asleep. 

The third time he wakes up, it’s to the creaky sound of the door opening. He rolls over to see Patrick tip toeing in. 

“Hey,” Patrick whispers, when he sees David’s eyes open. “How’d you sleep?” David just wrinkles his nose. 

“Any word from Alexis?” David checks his phone, just to be sure, and shakes his head. Patrick frowns. 

“Whas that?” David asks, voice slurred from sleep, as he props himself up on one arm and points with the other to a bag in Patrick’s hand. 

“Oh, I brought you some dinner. No turkey, thank god. Meatloaf and some admittedly bad mozzarella sticks. You can taste the freezer burn, but it’s hot melty cheese. Or, it was hot when I started? I figured you might still want them.” 

David forces himself into a sitting position and makes a grabby motion with his hands, still too tired to talk. Patrick hands it to him in the top bunk and then hoists himself up the ladder onto the bed. 

David eats half of the meatloaf and all of the mozzarella sticks — Patrick is right, they’re awful but they’re mozzarella sticks — before he talks again. “Thank you,” he croaks. He feels a little less frantic, even though his chest still feels like he might be having a heart attack. He picks up the phone and dials Alexis again. For the first time since he’d started calling this morning, the phone actually rings. He forgets to breathe till he gets to her voicemail again. He groans so loudly that it echoes through the cabin and he throws his phone down on the mattress. 

“I would just like to know,” he says with a huff, “whether to be scared  _ for _ her or pissed  _ at _ her for scaring me so goddamn bad.” 

Patrick puts an arm on his shoulder. “She’ll call soon, David.” 

David throws himself back down on the mattress as dramatically as possible. Patrick follows him down, laying so their heads are sharing a pillow. 

*

David doesn’t remember falling asleep, but the fourth wake up call of the day comes at around midnight, in the form of Alanis’s “You Outta Know.” Which is also his ring tone for Alexis. Which means—he feels around frantically for the vibrating phone. 

“Hello?! Alexis? Are you okay?!" 

“Yeah, David, I’m fine," she has the unmitigated gall to scoff at him, to talk to him like he's being silly. A deep flush of anger races up the sides of his face. "Are  _ you _ okay? I had like  _ seventeen _ missed calls from you!” 

“ _ WHAT? _ ” He’s pretty sure someone five cabins over is going to wake up from how loudly he just screamed into his phone. “ _ Me?  _ You sent me a fucking SOS text fourteen hours ago, and then you GHOSTED! What the actual fuck, Alexis!” 

“Oh my god, David, chill. I just couldn’t find my hair dryer and I thought maybe you had taken it to camp with you! But I found it, so we’re fine.” 

“We’re—I— _ WHAT _ ?! I hate your guts. You’re a fucking menace, you know I have  _ one  _ rule! What is it?!” 

A beat passes and then she mumbles, sounding halfway sorry, “No SOS.”

“Unless…”

“Unless I’m being kidnapped or there’s a body.”

“Exactly. Not a  _ fucking  _ hairdryer!” He’s surprised he hasn’t snapped his phone in half by now, he’s squeezing it so hard. 

“Yeah, well. Shouldn’t you be asleep right now?” The abrupt shift in conversation leaves David feeling like he missed a step. Before he can recover, Alexis is saying, “Anyway, Josh and I are about to take off so I’ve gotta go! Tell Patrick I say hi!” She hangs up the phone without waiting for him to say goodbye back. 

“I take it Alexis is okay?” Patrick asks, a little groggy, next to him. 

David registers for the first time since waking up that Patrick has his arm flung fully across David’s stomach — they must have been cuddling in their sleep — and that realization, coupled with the adrenaline crash, makes the words catch in David’s throat. “I, uh, yeah. Turns out,” he says to the ceiling, with a shaky laugh and gesticulating hand following his gaze. It’s a paltry attempt at levity; he can feel the weight of Patrick waiting for him to continue. “She couldn’t find her hairdryer, tried to accuse  _ me _ of stealing it.” 

“Mmmm, I’m glad she’s okay,” Patrick says, and he leans over to plant a soft, quick kiss on David’s shoulder. 

Shivers break out over David’s body at the almost-casual touch, his brain screaming at him to remember that it’s the middle of the night, and emotions are running high, and they’re both exhausted, so of course Patrick’s being cuddly. Still, he risks a glance, and instead of the closed eyes he’s expecting, Patrick is staring right at him, a smile playing at his lips. And David is just so fucking  _ over it,  _ over everything and everyone who isn’t Patrick, that he does what he’s been avoiding doing for the last eight weeks and kisses Patrick before he can stop himself. 

He isn’t sure what he’s expecting — maybe for Patrick to kiss him slowly, gently, the same way he’s taken care of David all day — but Patrick is kissing him back with the kind of intense desperation that David feels in his solar plexus, and it sends a fire coursing through David’s entire body. Patrick hooks the hand already splayed across David’s ribs around David’s hip and pulls David toward him while he flips himself on top, so he’s pressed into David from mouth to toes. He’s already hard, and David is going to lose his goddamn fucking mind. 

David wraps the leg furthest from the wall around Patrick, grateful for the extra length in his legs that allows him to drag his foot slowly up and down the slope of Patrick’s calf. His flannel pajama pants feel buttery beneath David’s feet, and they make the smallest susurration as they slide across Patrick’s skin. It adds to the pounding in his ears, and the soft little moaning sounds Patrick makes every time they break apart to take a breath or reposition. The sounds combine to form a song, and David has heard Patrick sing a lot but he doesn't think he’s ever heard him make music this good. 

He uses the leverage of his leg over Patrick’s to press his hips up in a gentle rhythm, filling in the space between them as Patrick tugs on his hair and bites at his lip and drags his nails across the back of David’s scalp. He wraps one strong, broad-fingered hand around the back of David’s neck, and David can feel the callouses from his guitar playing digging into the sensitive skin above his pulse point. It breaks something loose in him, something primal and possessive, that has him digging his fingers into Patrick’s back, undoubtedly leaving long strips of pink on the beautiful peaches-and-cream complexion as he drags Patrick’s shirt up and over his head. They break the kiss long enough for David to toss it on the floor, and then he’s searching for Patrick’s lips again.

Instead, Patrick presses a palm flat into David’s chest, just over his sternum, and looks at David with the kind of melting, unlocking gaze that makes David feel stripped naked until every secret he’s ever had is Patrick’s for the taking. Patrick traces his hand up David’s throat, along the line of his jaw, over the shell of his ear and across his cheekbone. He bites his lip and tweaks David’s nose, which makes David nip at his fingers. David’s not expecting to actually catch Patrick, to capture the first knuckle of his thumb in between his teeth, biting hard enough that Patrick hisses. 

And he’s definitely not expecting that to be the thing that flares the heat in Patrick’s eyes, that sends both of Patrick’s hands to the hem of David’s shirt, pushing it up and over his head so fast, he thinks he hears something rip. Thankfully, Patrick’s hot, hungry mouth closing over one nipple is enough to distract him from the potential tragedy of a destroyed seam. He moans, his head pushing even further back into the pillow as he shuts his eyes and memorizes the way Patrick’s mouth moves across his body, the flash of teeth, the gentle tug of his lips until David’s nipples are hard and Patrick runs a calloused thumb across them, which makes David keen and Patrick laugh, low and throaty and wicked enough that David is ready to come in his pants already. 

He answers with another roll of his hips, taking advantage of the fact that Patrick’s levered above him to such a degree that the movement drags their erections against one another, the friction delicious but not nearly enough.

“Fuck, David,” Patrick hisses. “Do it again?”

David complies, does it a second and then a third time as his hands travel to Patrick’s hips, helping him to grind harder back, lift his hips a bit further, until they’re dry humping against each other in earnest. It’s amazing, and maybe the only time David has ever truly enjoyed the act, but it’s quickly becoming not nearly enough. When Patrick catches David’s lip between his teeth again, David gets the idea that Patrick is in full agreement. 

“I–I need–”

“Tell me what you need, David,” and Patrick’s sudden and strident desire to give him whatever he needs sends a bolt of liquid heat through all of David’s limbs and his eyes roll back in his head. 

“Less clothes. Need less clothes,” he paws at the waistband of Patrick’s pajama pants, his fingers seeming to have forgotten how to function, and Patrick bats his hands away when he rolls to the side, off of David, shimmying out of his pajama bottoms and boxer briefs in one swift movement. He takes a second to stretch long as he tosses the clothes over David and onto the floor, and David takes his time looking. Patrick’s chest is broad, and dusted with a coppery smattering of hair that darkens and thickens beneath his belly button, leading down to a dick that’s thick, and long, and makes David’s mouth water just to look at. Patrick is leaking precome, and the sight makes David’s dick twitch. His fingers flinch into fists as he fights the urge to reach out, staying stock still under the arresting gaze Patrick has him pinned by. 

“Your turn,” he says, the corner of his mouth tilting up as he quirks an eyebrow and looks pointedly at David.

And because it’s dark as shit in the cabin, and there's no chance of them being interrupted, and he’s spent every overly lonely night of the last two years imagining this exact moment, he banishes the loop of every cruel thing anyone has ever said about his body and strips naked as fast as the muscles in his hands will cooperate. 

The little gasp that falls out of Patrick’s mouth will play on a loop in his head until he dies. The quiet, reverential, “David” that follows is a prayer, and a boon, and if all of this were to stop right now, it would be enough to carry David through two more years of lonely nights all by itself. 

But they don’t stop there. Patrick ducks his head again, his body still prone next to David’s, his lips meeting David’s quick and hot before tracing a line along his neck, over the pulse point behind his ear, down the line of his shoulder and across his collarbone. He bites at a soft spot of flesh over David’s heart and if David could carve his heart out now and give it to Patrick, he’d already be too late. One hand drifts over David’s hip, pressing into the crease where the meat of his thigh meets the rest of his body, and David bites down on the inside of his cheek until he gets the faintest trace of something coppery in the back of his throat. 

“Patrick,” his voice is strangled, and Patrick hums into the stretch of skin just below David’s belly button. Patrick has slid down the bed as far as he can, but he’s not going to be able to get any further down unless they switch postions, and David’s not going to be able to do that if Patrick won’t get his fucking mouth off of David’s over-sensitive skin. “Patrick, let me…” he pushes on Patrick’s shoulders with the slightest pressure, and Patrick shoots up like a rocket. He’s looking at David with concern pulling all his features together.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I just wanna,” David pushes into the mattress with his elbows until he slides up the bed a few inches, as much as he can without being beyond the bedframe. It’s not the most comfortable he’s ever been— there’s not really a way to make all six-foot-plus of him fit in the top twin bunk— but it gives them enough room that Patrick is able to slide down between David’s thighs and David is subjected to the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his life — Patrick Brewer’s soft curls as he stretches his pale pink lips around the head of David’s cock and presses his tongue firmly against the underside of the head, drawing it up and around in a circle that makes David moan, low and long in his chest. “Fuck, Patrick.”

Patrick makes a little humming noise of assent, the vibration echoing down through David's balls, and it feels so good David never wants him to stop. Patrick bobs his head, taking another few centimenters of David with every movement, and it’s exquisite torture, all together too slow and too much for David to handle. 

He’s trying to hold still, let Patrick move at his own pace, but the further he trails his lips down David’s shaft, the more desperate David gets for the friction, the movement, the glide of his dick in and out of Patrick’s tight, wet mouth. He clenches a fist in Patrick’s hair and fights the movement that brings his hips up in micro movements. After a few seconds of that, Patrick pulls against David’s hand and off of David with a loud, filthy pop.

“David,” he’s panting, his breath warm where it dusts across the crease of David’s hip. Patrick presses his face there, David’s inner thigh, and David can almost feel him gathering the courage to say what he needs to say. “You don’t need to be careful with me. I’ve — this isn’t my first time anymore, okay. I want this.” And then he’s got his mouth back on David, that sweet, delicious mouth that says whatever it wants, as sincerely as it wants, and has no idea the devastation it can leave in its wake. 

David can’t spend time thinking about what Patrick said— that he’s done this before, maybe lots before, that it’s not his first time _anymore_ because the first time had been with David, and and and— because Patrick’s finally bottomed out, and David can feel the gentle pressure on the head of his dick when Patrick swallows around him. He closes his eyes and tries to steady the sensation flowing through his body into a single point. Patrick backs off David just enough that he doesn’t choke when David starts to move his hips more quickly, fucking up into Patrick’s mouth while one hand wraps around to cradle the back of Patrick’s head.

At first, Patrick tries to keep up a matching rhythm, but before long he stops moving and just lets David  _ take.  _ Take his mouth, and his throat, and when David brushes a thumb across Patrick’s cheeks where they’re hollowed around David, David feels tears. There’s a feeling in his chest when he comes that’s like a shattering and a restitching all at once. He comes with Patrick’s name on his lips, a million other words he can’t hear himself say, as Patrick swallows everything David has to give him. David feels himself start to go soft in Patrick’s mouth, and Patrick pulls off gently, pressing one more kiss to the tip as he slides his body back up David’s to nestle down into his shoulder. 

“Holy fuck,” Patrick says, pressing a gently kiss to David’s chest. “That was so hot.”

David chuckles, rolling onto his side to face Patrick. Every muscle in his body feels worn out, but that doesn’t stop the muscles in his face from curling into a grin. “You’re telling me.”

His hand reaches for Patrick, tracing along the side of his body, over the crest of his hip, long fingers wrapping around Patrick’s erection and beginning to slide slowly. David watches as Patrick exhales a long, shuddering breath, his teeth biting into the soft flesh of his lower lip. David’s grip tightens and Patrick groans, his head falling forward onto David’s chest. 

“God, yes, David. Faster.” 

David complies, but not before taking a few more long, slow pulls, flicking his wrist around the head, thumb dragging along the slit, using sweat and precome to slick the length of Patrick as David begins to jerk him off. It doesn’t take long, and David doesn’t blame him, Patrick coming onto David’s thigh with a jerk, and a flash of teeth, and something that sounds to David an awful lot like a strangled scream, or maybe a prayer. 

David runs a hand through the come quickly cooling on his thigh and he thinks whatever God Patrick was just praying to must be listening when Patrick whines a little and reaches for David's wrist, pulling his hand to his face and sucking gently on each of David's fingers in turn, lapping at his palm in slow strokes of his tongue. And watching Patrick doing this, seeing the slow unspooling of simple pleasure across his face, slots another puzzle piece into place in David's understanding of this new Patrick.

David holds completely still while Patrick finishes cleaning off his hand the best he can, and then he uses his fingers to cup Patrick’s chin and pull him in for a long, thorough kiss. David can feel the gentle ebb of the energy catapulted them into the morning, and he wants to fall asleep just like this, his tongue painting lazy circles on the inside of Patrick’s mouth while his thumb worries at a patch of stubble on Patrick’s chin. But Patrick Brewer —- perfect, polite, proactive Patrick — can’t just let that happen. 

Instead, he practically slides his face off of David’s, slipping sideways over his body like the opposite of when he’d gotten naked, hanging his entire torso off the side of the bed. He’s roots around for a towel in the laundry basket at the side of his bed, wiping himself off quickly and sliding his pajama bottoms over the swell of his ass. He turns and hands David the towel, pulling it back as David wraps it a hand around it, tensing the fabric between the two. Patrick meets his eyes. “Thank you, David.”

David slides the towel of out Patrick’s grip and nods, looking at the small floral print on Patrick’s sheets. “For what?”

Patrick huffs out a laugh. “Really?” He leans forward and presses a soft kiss to the stretch of David’s kiss. “I’m just, really glad we finally got a night together. Took us long enough.” 

He says it like it’s a romantic thing, and David thinks it might be, in a universe where he hadn’t seen the door opening on the potential for a hundred more nights — a thousand more nights, a lifetimes of nights — everywhere but here. But Patrick has been waiting, apparently, for a night in the singular, a chance to relive a missed opportunity, or make the best of admittedly limited options, and now he’s thanking David. Like you do when your’e done with something, or someone. David chokes out a noise that must be close enough to a laugh, because Patrick just pats him on the forearm and smiles again.

“I’m going to go refill my water bottle, you want?”

“Yes, please.” Water sounds nice. Having Patrick out of his own cabin so he can break down in the dignity of privacy sounds better. 

The screen door slams behind Patrick and to David it sounds like he barks out the word “one”. And it sends David back onto Patrick’s pillow, that now smells like sweat and sex and too much like David to be a comfort. It’s one more thing he’s ruined in this bed, and it’s that thought that carries him off to sleep. 

*

Despite the incessant napping earlier in the day, David sleeps like a baby the rest of the night. He wakes up in a weird, hyped-up state = that he can’t explain until he remembers he isn’t in his bed. And then remembers  _ why  _ he isn’t in his bed.

He notices pretty quickly, however, that he is alone in bed. 

_ Fuck _ .

It’s not like he expected breakfast in bed and sweet nothings whispered in his ear, but being left alone in someone’s bed is a new low. That it’s Patrick’s makes it all the worse. Part of him feels like he shouldn’t be surprised, and the other part is angry at him for not giving Patrick more grace. Patrick doesn’t owe him anything, after all.

David groans into the empty room. Five minutes. He’s going to give himself five minutes to brood, and then he’s going to drag himself through this walk of shame. It isn’t his first, and certainly not his worst, and in two days he won’t have to see most of them again for at least ten months. Maybe ever.

But before his sulking time is up, Patrick bursts through the door with what looks like a mug of coffee and something wrapped in a napkin. His step falters when he sees David. Shit. A look of confusion passes across his face. He expected David to be gone by now, like any decent one night stand. 

“Hi,” Patrick says, and it comes out a little breathy, his mouth pink and perfect as he stares at David. David wants to fall  _ right _ through the floor. 

“Hi, um, sorry, I didn’t mean to overstay—“

“What? No. I let you sleep. You had a long day yesterday. Here,” Patrick says, shaking the napkin, “I brought you toast and coffee. But you have to be quick. The campers are getting here in like ten minutes, so the cabin is going to be crawling with a bunch of underage kids who really don’t need to know about, ya know.” 

David’s almost impressed. Even for a Canadian, Patrick is unfailingly polite when kicking David out of his room. “Mmm, well,” David says, as he tries to keep the majority of his body covered while he slides off the top bunk and onto the ground to hunt for his clothes. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I can just go now and…” he trails off. 

He looks up and Patrick is staring at him again. He looks confused, and David can’t understand why. “What? No, David, they’re  _ literally _ ten minutes away. Stevie texted me a picture of the town sign.”

“Oh,  _ shit _ . Okay.” He slips his shorts on, his phone into his pocket, and grabs the coffee and toast from Patrick before he pauses. “Um, thanks. For this. And, uh, for yesterday.”

Patrick smiles, a tiny thing that makes David’s chest ache, and he ducks his head to press a kiss to David’s shoulder as he passes. “Thank  _ you  _ David. I’m really glad—”

“ — it finally happened, mmhmm,” David nods and holds the coffee up in front of his mouth to give him something to do besides word vomiting. Patrick cocks his head and purses his lips like he’s got follow-up questions. 

Which, apparently he does, because he says, “Um, can we talk later, David?” There’s an apprehension there that drops David’s stomach through his shoes. 

“Mhm,” David says, sadly, already knowing what’s coming. “Any time you like.”

*

The rest of the day is slammed with campers coming back, the chaos of 100 kids and teens descending onto the camp a flurry of BO and hormones. David doesn’t have a chance to see Patrick again, or even eat, until dinner. 

He drags his tray of fried chicken and corn over to their usual table, where Patrick and Stevie have already eaten and are laughing quietly. 

“What’s so funny?” he asks with more bite than he intended. 

Patrick stops laughing abruptly but his face goes soft. “Hi,” is all he says again, and his smile looks – shy? Nervous? David can’t parse it and that, more than anything, makes his flushed summer skin go cold. 

“Hi?” Stevie says, more a question than anything, and looks between David and Patrick. Her mouth starts to curl into that demonic smile that David hates, and he refuses to play along. So when she says, “so, David, how was your  _ night _ ?” He just rolls his eyes and flips her off. 

Patrick looks at his watch and jumps up. “Listen, I have to go start getting everyone checked in for the talent show. But, you’re coming, right?” He stares at David and waits for an answer, rocking from his heels to the balls of feet like he only ever does when he’s nervous. 

David eyes him suspiciously before slamming his fork down. “Goddamn it! What the hell  _ are _ you planning?”

Patrick laughs, loud and clear. Whatever nerves David thought he saw have vanished. “Don’t worry, you’re going to love it,” Patrick says with a half wink, and picks up a guitar case David hadn’t noticed sitting half under the table. 

“Will I, though?” he yells after Patrick, who turns around, grins, and swings back around and out of the mess hall. 

David stabs at his chicken with unneccessary force, while Stevie’s stares across the table at him looking like the fucking Cheshire Cat. All she’s missing is a striped shirt. 

*

_ This is fine _ , David thinks.  _ This is totally fine.  _

It’s far from the first time he’s had sex with someone who immediately tried to give him the brush off. And, if Patrick is in a good enough mood that he can still sing some god awful song to fuck with David, clearly he’s content to just pretend it never happened. They’re going to laugh, and act like everything is normal. 

That’s completely fine. 

Will last night will haunt David for the rest of his waking days? Probably

Is he rapidly coming to the conclusion that he’s been in love with his best friend since he was fourteen, even if they haven’t seen each other in two years? Maybe! 

But. 

But they’re friends. And he’s genuinely thrilled to still be friends with Patrick. Things would be a lot worse if he weren’t.

So this is fine. 

Patrick is hosting, which means he goes first. David braces himself.

“This one goes out to — well, they know who they are,” Patrick says into the mic, and Stevie elbows him so hard in his rib cage that he’s sure he’ll be bruised in the morning. 

Patrick starts strumming the guitar, and about a dozen awful song choices spin through David’s head. 

But Patrick starts singing, and it isn’t some god awful Justin Timberlake song or a whiny James Blunt. 

It’s fucking Death Cab for Cutie, from an album they’d listened to together years ago. And Patrick is crooning, fucking  _ crooning _ , and it’s spreading a fire through David that he doesn’t know what to do with. 

_ “I want to live where soul meets body/ And let the sun wrap its arms around me”  _

Because David had told Patrick, at the time, what a romantic song it was. It sounds like sad bastard music, but it isn’t. It’s beautiful, when you actually sit and listen to the lyrics. It’s a little ethereal. David loves it. 

And the thing is that there’s no way Patrick forgot. Patrick never forgets anything David tells him. It’s eerie, the way he’s catalogued all of David’s hopes and fears and dreams over the years. So if Patrick is singing this, it’s because he remembers. If Patrick is singing this then —

_ “So brown eyes I'll hold you near/ ‘Cause you're the only song I want to hear”  _

David barely registers Stevie’s hand on his arm, because Patrick’s eyes are louder than his voice through the speakers, and he has not once stopped looking at David while he sings. David’s heart is on fucking  _ fire _ . 

_ “A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere” _

Patrick finishes the song, and the room loses it — they always do, when Patrick performs. He takes a second to smile, give a little wave, a nod of his head that serves as an acknowledgement and a gentle deferment of people’s affection. It’s the exact kind of thing that makes Patrick such a joy to watch. After a few beats, Patrick introduces the first of the campers, some improv situation that David wants nothing to do with, and hops off the stage. 

David watches Patrick cross the room toward him, and he has no idea what to do with his hands. How has he made it twenty years of his life just not thinking about what to do with his hands? 

The adrenaline is making his legs shake a little by the time Patrick is finally in front of him. David has a million questions and thoughts running through his head but all he manages to say is, “well, that was unexpected.” He even manages to keep his voice from shaking when he says it, a causal lift of his shoulder giving the nervous energy in his body somewhere to go.

Patrick smiles, closed-mouth and heart-eyed, and points behind him to the stage with his thumb. “Their set is ten minutes. Can we go somewhere and—talk?” Patrick looks down at David’s mouth as he chokes on the end of his sentence. 

David is oblivious sometimes, but not that oblivious. He knows what Patrick is going to say — that they should give this a shot, that they’ve been on the edge of this for years, that it’s worth long distance. David can hear it before Patrick even opens his mouth, his eyes big and sparkling and just for David. He feels sick to his stomach at the prospect of all of this.

“David, I—did you like the song?” He’s rubbing the back of his neck, and David can tell even in the dim light that Patrick’s face is flush. It takes every ounce of willpower David has not to kiss him within an inch of his life. 

“Mhm, I did. Very much. You know that.” Patrick gives David an indulgent little smile. “But Patrick—” 

“David, wait, just listen. I know things were a little weird at the beginning of the summer, and I know maybe I haven’t always been the most upfront about things, but...last night…” David has no idea why he lets Patrick keep talking, except that maybe David has been waiting six years to hear Patrick say all of this, and he wants to hear it, because it’s easier to cling to a memory than a dream, sometimes. “I want to give us a chance.”

David is shaking his head before Patrick has even finished talking. “No, you don’t.”

Patrick’s brow furrows and his eyes go wise as he says, “Excuse me?”

“No!”

“Look, I know long distance isn’t ideal, but it’s only a six hour drive from New York to Montreal, and we have a lot of alternating holidays, so I really think—” 

It’s about as much as David can handle, Patrick putting in the work to follow through on something that will inevitably crumble. 

“Patrick, it's a bad idea. I know  _ now _ it doesn't feel like it, while we’re trapped in this mosquito-infested hellhole for two months, where it’s either me or Jake, and we’ve got all this  _ history _ , but this isn’t—I’m not—you aren’t going to want  _ this _ ,” he motions at himself, “when you’re back in civilization with a bunch of guys readily accessible who haven’t known you since you were fourteen, and my disastrous self a twelve hour round trip drive away.” 

Patrick looks like he’s been slapped, which is fair. It isn’t often that David stands up for himself, even less-so when he does it by referring to their shared past and most likely unshared future. “David, how could — what would make — why would you  _ possibly  _ think that?” He takes a step toward David, whose hands fly forward to keep the distance between them. 

“Because it’s  _ true _ and you know it. You know my track record. This would never work.”

There’s clapping from inside, which means the improv group was either very good, or everyone is thrilled that they’ve finished. David has a hunch it’s the latter and he spins to stare at the front door. 

“You know what?” Patrick’s voice is tight and thin when he speaks, and David spins back around to look at him. His face is red, the vein in his neck standing out in stark relief as his eyes narrow and the lines in his forehead deepen. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is a bad idea. I have to go introduce the next act.” He storms inside, the line of his shoulders rigid as the door swings shut behind him with a metallic bang. 

*

David stays frozen in place long enough that he hears two more rounds of applause before he slowly walks back to his cabin. This is the hardest thing he’s ever done, to stand across from Patrick and hear him say things he thinks he means, but doesn’t. But his year in the city had taught him several lessons, self-preservation being one of the most important. So he practices honing the skill while he rejects the guy he’s definitely in love with.

This is fucked. 

But more fucked would be Patrick driving six hours to break up with him, or Patrick cheating on him, or the two hundred other ways this would definitely go south if he David actually let them try it. 

He’s almost back at his cabin when his phone rings -- he’d forgotten to turn the ringer off this morning, and Alexis’s Alanis ring tone chimes in his pocket. 

“Are you okay?” He doesn’t even bother with pleasantries. Either she’s in danger, or he wants nothing to do with her. 

“Hello to you too!” 

“What do you  _ want _ , Alexis?” 

“Ugh! Nothing! Honestly. I’m just calling to say hi or whatever.” 

“No, you’re not. What do you want?” 

She lets out a tiny huff of air, her weird tell that she’s conceding defeat. “Fine. I’m—I’m sorry. For scaring you.” 

David doesn’t think he can remember a single time Alexis has apologized for something unprompted. “What are you even talking about?” 

He can practically hear her stompy little flounce “The thing with the hairdryer? I guess I, like, scared you with my little text or something, and. I’m sorry.” This is weird. Very weird. He can’t fathom why she’s decided this, of all the batshit, fucked up times she’s scared him, is the time to apologize. But David is exhausted, and what’s that saying about gift horses again? “I, um, thank you? And I was.  _ Really _ scared.” 

“You don’t need to worry about me, David. I’m fine.” 

“This time, maybe!” He’s feeling a little frantic again, but he’s lived his entire life in a frantic state where his sister is concerned. “But what about all the times I’ve had to send colored contacts to the consulate, or when I had to call in that favor from the diplomat’s daughter I dated when you got arrested abroad for not having a visa for a  _ third _ time and we didn’t have money anymore to fix the problem? I am  _ constantly  _ worried about you.” 

Alexis is quiet for so long that David thinks the call might have dropped. He’s about to check his phone screen when she speaks again. “Thank you, David. I— I love you.” 

“I—you’re welcome. Just, please be careful?”

“I am. I promise.” 

“Mmhm. Okay, well, I’m going to be home next week. Maybe we can hang out?” 

“Yeah, maybe. I’ll, um, try to be home.” 

“Well. Don’t strain anything with the effort. I—” he swallows thickly.

“Duh, David," she cuts him off, but there's no edge to it as the lone goes dead and he slides his phone back in his pocket. 

David is grateful. Still shocked, but grateful that Alexis apologized. It soothes the corner of his brain that is always, no matter where she is, worried about Alexis. 

But. 

Alexis has called him from far-flung countries in the middle of regime changes, and run off on two week trips with suspected (and known) criminals. She’s parachuted out of rickety planes and manipulated dangerous foreign officials. And she has never, not once, told David she was sorry for scaring him. 

There is just no way Alexis came to this conclusion on her own. And David can think of only one person who could have helped her get there. 

*

David spends the last hour of the talent show waiting outside of Patrick’s cabin.

It’s a solid sixty minutes of pacing and spinning and panicking, but he clings to his nerve by the skin of his teeth, because he has to talk to Patrick. He  _ needs _ to know. 

Some of the campers make it back to the cabin before Patrick, but they ignore the sight of David. They’re used to him by now, he suspects, after eight weeks of David regularly loitering outside of Patrick’s cabin, waiting for him. David’s campers are certainly used to finding Patrick crouched outside their door. 

When Patrick round the corner and spots David, he stops in his tracks. His face is expressionless, and David hates it. “What do you want, David?” 

“Can we talk?” 

Patrick is silent for a few seconds, each one a chance for David’s heart rate to increase tenfold. “Sure,” he says, finally. He ducks his head in the doorway of the cabin and calls, “guys, I’ll be back by lights out.” 

David starts walking, and it’s a minute before he realizes he’s walking them toward the clearing where they have their s’mores nights. He stops at the edge of the treeline. He crosses his arms to match Patrick’s, and asks: “Did you tell Alexis I was worried?” 

Patrick laughs, an ugly, hollow thing, and scrubs his face with his hands. “ _ Worried _ ? David, you were having a panic attack when I found you, sitting in the  _ dirt _ , and then you spent the rest of the day in and out of sleep with your phone  _ clutched _ in your hand. You were terrified!” 

“So. You did tell her then.” 

“Yes, David. I told her. Because you two are incapable of communicating, and she deserved to know. If  _ only _ for your sake, so you’re not, just,  _ constantly _ making yourself sick.” 

David opens his mouth — maybe to say thank you, he isn’t totally sure — but Patrick’s face is raw with emotion, frustration and hurt and care, and the words are lost in his throat. Because instead, for the second time in twenty-four hours, he’s pulling Patrick in and kissing him. Except this time, it’s with everything he has, because no one— _ no one _ —has ever once shown David the care that Patrick shows him daily. And he’s been ignoring that fact for a long time, but it’s one thing to check the cabin for moths and build campfires when David feels like shit, but talking to Alexis is just—

So he kisses Patrick, and he feels Patrick kiss him back, feels the building towards something that’s deeper and hotter and more fevered that just a kiss, until David feels a hand on his chest and Patrick pushes him back. 

“David, I—I can’t do this.” 

“What?” David’s voice could not pitch up higher if he tried. Because of course he can’t fix this thing he broke. Of course it isn’t that easy. He wants to take back everything he’s said to Patrick since the talent show, to take him at his word and and believe that Patrick really does want to try, really will want David when the summer sheen is gone and there’s more around that poison oak and bad weed and people he’s seen a million times over. 

“I mean,” Patrick says, and he sounds a little desperate. “Do you really not get it?!"

"Get  _ what _ ?" David can think of a million ways he wants Patrick to answer that question, and feels foolish for hoping for any of them.

"David. I’ve liked you since I was  _ fourteen _ .”

David thinks he might choke on his own tongue. "What? No you haven't."

“Oh, get off it. I made it all of two minutes into camp before you were all I could  _ think _ about, and we both know it. And I’ve spent basically every day for the last six years trying to reconcile this — this, like, half-life I have at home, without you, and the eight weeks I get with you, which is literally the  _ only _ time I ever feel right. When we hooked up that last summer, I thought finally,  _ finally _ this was happening. And then you disappeared for  _ two years _ , David.” Patrick sounds close to tears now, and it’s ripping something open inside of David. “I’ve spent two fucking years making out with guys who weren’t you, surviving on one-off Facebook messages and ‘happy birthday’ texts and prying details out of Stevie on pain of death.” 

David doesn’t feel any blood spilling, but that can’t be right, because he’s pretty sure his chest has just cracked in two. He opens his mouth to try to say something, anything, while his brain recalibrates, but Patrick isn’t finished. 

“And then. You showed up this summer and I thought maybe,  _ maybe _ this was my second chance. I was out, I had dated guys, you were single — maybe you would finally want me now.” He shoves his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie and curls in on himself.

David lets out an involuntary whimpers at that, because  _ imagine _ , imagine Patrick thinking there was ever a day of David’s life that he didn’t want Patrick. Patrick keeps going. “And then after Alexis, and seeing you like that, and what — what happened between us. God, that song,” Patrick paws at his eyes, his voice wet snotty as he rubs his face on the sleeve of his hoodie. “I sang that stupid song you love…but no. I’m  _ never _ fucking enough for you, David. And I am just. So tired of waiting for you to see that this — that  _ I _ — am worth trying for. I know you have baggage, David, but that doesn’t mean you can just toy with my emotions to feel better about yourself. You’re a good person, but sometimes, I swear to god,” he finishes, shaking his head.

David is speechless. But Patrick has it backwards —  _ David  _ has been the one pining, not Patrick.  _ David  _ is the one whose heart has been ripping and tearing and cracking under the stress of school years apart and summers together until it was barely a pile of dust. How could Patrick think that  _ David _ has been the one who—the one who didn’t—

But Patrick seems to take David’s silence as something far more sinister than the complete upending of his world that’s currently making David’s head spin. “Yeah. That’s what I thought,” he says harshly, and turns on his heel back in the direction of his cabin. 

And David is still so stunned that he doesn’t call after him until he hears a door slam in the distance, one single, small, broken, “wait,” to no one.

*

David [5:02am]: come to the fire pit 

David [5:02am]: when you wake up 

David [5:06am]: please

David fires off the texts, and waits. He twists his rings and drums his fingers. And waits. He scrubs his face with his hands, he paces around the fire pit. And waits. 

David hasn’t slept. Of course he hasn’t slept. He’s an insomniac on his best days. How was he supposed to sleep after Patrick had decided to speak and shift the way gravity works in his life. He’s spent the last six hours completely manic, trying to reconcile his reality with what Patrick told him. And what he’s started to realize in his sleep-deprived, desperate state is that maybe, just maybe, all of those campfires and passed notes and late night walks weren’t just the way Patrick Brewer made friends. Or, they were, but they weren’t  _ just  _ that. 

That maybe the talent show songs aimed at him for years, the wanting to talk after they kissed their last summer as campers, all the tiny moments David had desperately wished Patrick was flirting with him...maybe that  _ was _ Patrick flirting with him. 

David’s warmest Rick Owens hoodie is doing little to combat the early chill. But he’s also pretty sure it isn’t just the temperature that’s giving him goosebumps. 

David feels a wave of nausea cresting, his fifteenth or sixteenth of the night. He knows what he has to do, and it’s going to be  _ hard _ . Because David doesn’t  _ do _ this, doesn’t just spill his guts and bare his soul to people. Any time he’s tried, he’s been left to pick up the pieces of his own heart. 

Except this time, not spilling his guts has inadvertently hurt Patrick. Badly, it seems. He just hopes not beyond repair. 

Despite what the world might think, David isn’t a complete monster. He doesn’t like to let the people he cares for suffer. So as much as David still cannot fathom that Patrick might actually  _ want _ him, he also can’t let Patrick believe that David  _ doesn’t _ . 

Because the idea is laughable. Because David wants Patrick, has wanted Patrick, in every way imaginable for as long as they’ve known each other. Because David—

He hears footsteps before Patrick makes it into the clearing. It looks like Patrick hasn’t slept either, eyes bleary and hair tousled, a blue hoodie thrown over his pajamas. And somehow, he still looks spectacularly, impossibly beautiful. The seventeenth wave of nausea hits, the strongest one yet. He needs to sit down. 

“You came.” David’s voice is hoarse, from lack of sleep and intermittent crying all night. He doesn’t even want to know what his face looks like. 

Patrick drops down next to him on the log, two feet between them. The last time they sat here, just the two of them, David kissed him afterward. That chaste little peck on the lips feels like it happened to two different people, and now the physical space between them feels like a mile. “Yeah,” Patrick says, voice flat, staring into the unlit fire pit. “I was up. When you texted. Reorganizing the equipment shed. Listen, David—” 

“No, you listen,” David says, swinging to his right to look at Patrick, even if Patrick won’t look at him. “Sorry, that came out  _ way _ harsher than I meant for it to. But please, just. Let me go first this time.”

“David—”

“Patrick, I love you. I am  _ in _ love with you. I think I have been for a very long time.”

“You think?” Patrick grinds the heel of his hiking boot into the dirt, his voice heavy and tired and David would sell his soul to a devil he’s not sure he believes in to never hear Patrick use that voice again. ‘

“I  _ know  _ that I’ve been in love with you for a very long time. You said you got, what? Two minutes into camp before you knew? Then I’ve got, like, a solid minute and a half on you, so. Shut up.” 

Patrick’s jaw drops and he laughs as he looks at David. “Did you just tell me to shut up?”

“I told you to let me go first!” David bites back a smile but can’t help but feel the warm thrill of their familiar banter. He clears his throat and forces himself to keep talking, though. He’s come this far and he needs to finish saying what he needs to say. “I’ve also spent a very long time convincing myself there was no way you could ever want me.” David sees Patrick’s face contort in genuine confusion as he turns to David and opens his mouth to speak, but David isn’t finished. He holds up a hand and Patrick closes his mouth with an audible click. “But, I realized last night that I may have made a  _ very _ bad error in judgement. I am not good at what most people would call  _ feelings _ , and in trying to protect myself, I’ve think — I know — I’ve been hurting you. Badly. And I’m really, truly sorry about that.” He clears his throat before he keeps going. This next part feels like throwing himself off a building and hoping to land on a tightwire, and it stabs at all his softest parts even more than pushing away Patrick last night. “And I understand if you don’t still want  _ us _ to happen,” he says, motioning back and forth at the insurmountable space between the two of them. “But you deserved to know  _ why  _ I said what I said, and to know that. You weren’t wrong. About any of it.” 

Patrick looks back at the empty fire pit when David finishes. His face is blank, and the seconds stretch into minutes before David can’t handle the silence any longer. “Patrick?” 

“David, that was — I know that couldn’t have been easy for you, and I appreciate it. But.”

_ But.  _ Three words that wrap around each of David’s ribs and snap them inwards so that he folds in on himself. He nods his head and makes a little ‘yep’ motion with his lips. “How do I know you’re serious? It’s been a pretty case of emotional whiplash these last 24 hours.”

“Because…Because, I don’t know, Patrick! You know me! You know everything about me. Do you really think I would be here in the fucking woods at 6am word vomiting at you for—for what? Some admittedly really incredible head?”

The corner of Patrick’s mouth that David can see curls down in a tiny smile. “So you’re saying I give incredible blow jobs?”

“Oh my god!”

Patrick’s laugh is ringing through the clearing when he leans over, grabs David’s hand. He brings the back of David’s knuckles to his lips and grazes them gently. “So you’re saying that time you and I were playing chicken in the lake with Twyla…?”

“Yep.”

“And when you brought Stevie to the date I had planned for your birthday?”

“Oh, that was a date?” Patrick pinches the skin of David’s wrist and David squirms. “Yeah, then too.”

“And when I sang you “Teenage Dirtbag” —” 

“No. Not then.”

“Okay, David.” 

“I’m serious. No one loves that song.”

“Mm, except I kind of think you do,” Patrick pulls David towards him on the log, tucking himself under David’s arm and burrowing into the soft flesh of his side. “I think you, David Rose, absolutely adore it when I sing trashy teen pop punk anthems to you in front of an entire room full of people. And I’m not going to kiss you again until you say it.”

“Is that so?” David ducks his head, but Patrick pulls away — not completely, not even really enough to count, but enough that it makes David laugh and reel Patrick back into the heat of his body. “Fine. I acquiesce the point. But only so you’ll kiss me again.”

“I accept those terms.” 

David is expecting this kiss to feel different, because he feels different, but it doesn’t. Because the lips he’s kissing are the same strong, sure lips he’s been thinking about for years, the hand on his knee is the same one he’s seen throw balls and build chests and hold David’s hand in his with more care than anyone has ever shown him before. Kissing Patrick isn't a new, bright thing. It's a homecoming, and it always will be.

**2009: Fall of Sophomore Year**

Patrick [3:07pm]: headed your way now last class got out late 

Patrick [3:07pm]: ETA is 9:32 if I don’t stop. Can we get thai when I get in?

David [3:08pm]: I can’t promise to wait that long to eat

David [3:00pm]: But yes to thai 

David [3:10pm]: don't forget the ketchup chips 

David [3:16pm] cant wait to see you

Patrick [3:17pm]: love you too 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last shoutout to [helvetica_upstart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/) for this wild beta, even at the eleventh hour. She is the absolute greatest and deserves only good things in this life. 
> 
> Come hang out with us on tumblr at [ships-to-sail](ships-to-sail.tumblr.com) and [storieswelove](storieswelove.tumblr.com)!


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